The Mapmaker's Daughter (21 page)

When he is down to only a thin shirt, he takes me in his arms. I make room for his hand to slip between my thighs, and I feel his fingers stroking and separating the pink lips of my most private place. I moan with pleasure, and when he feels my knees give way, he guides me into the bedroom.

He helps me gently into bed, then spreads my legs with his knees and teases the insides of my thighs. Taking some of my wetness on his fingers, he touches his lips and then mine. He moves forward and brushes the tip of his penis against me, and I spread my legs wider, as if I could grow around him and satisfy myself that way even if he never moved at all.

Then he is inside me. His thighs are muscular and hard, and I use my own to grip his, bringing my hands down around his buttocks to move with him. A feeling grows within me, something close to pain but so glorious I want it to go on and on. Jamil drives hard into me until my body is splitting all the way to my mouth, bursting open with waves of pleasure so great I don’t care how loudly I cry out.

We go on, at times with small and exquisite movements and then with wild abandon that leaves our bodies slick with sweat. I hear Jamil’s breath grow shorter and more insistent, and suddenly he pulls out of me. White fluid makes an arch from his penis onto my belly. I have never seen such a thing, and then I remember that of course we must not make a baby.

With a grunt of satisfaction, he falls on his back and breaks out in soft, amazed laughter, as our breath slowly calms. Lying in Jamil’s arms throws the last bit of earth on the grave of my sad and lonely marriage. I am finally alive as a woman—blessedly, amazingly alive.

***

“Your mind’s wandering,” Simona says gently, as I look down to see a few pears in the bottom of my basket and hers already full. Two months have passed since Jamil and I became lovers, and on this sultry September morning, with a hint of fall in the air, my thoughts are the only part of me that hasn’t slowed to a stop.

Jamil must return to Granada soon, and he wants me to go with him. The caliph needs a tutor for his grandchildren, and Jamil has arranged for me to have a respectable life at court if I should want it. There are children for Eliana to befriend, and Jamil tells me the Muslim custom of men having more than one woman will make it easier for us to be together openly. Jamil is waiting for me to agree, but the word “yes” won’t cross my lips.

“I love it here in Queluz,” I say. “To be somewhere else, and know that the pears were ready to pick and you were doing it without me? To celebrate the High Holy Days without your family?” I bring my sleeve up to wipe my eyes. “I’m crying again,” I say, trying to smile. “Isn’t love supposed to make people happy?”

“You don’t have to leave,” Simona reminds me. “You can tell Jamil you won’t go.”

“I know,” I reply, “and I’ve almost told him that, more than once. But being with him here in Queluz is so—” I struggle to find the word. “It’s embarrassing to have you know what we’re doing when Jamil’s horse is outside my door and Eliana has been shooed off to visit you.”

Simona’s eyebrows arch as if the decision should be easy, but I know she understands. I turn my attention to the pears to keep from pouring out worries my friend has already listened to more patiently than most people would.

Jamil has been gone almost two weeks on a hunting trip near Tomar with King Afonso, a taste of what my life will be like when he leaves Lisbon. Will I then be just a woman who lives in a faraway town, someone he sees so rarely that love doesn’t really matter? For diplomats, kings always come before lovers. Jamil will go where he is sent, and he might never be here again.

Then again, what would it be like to be a Jew in Granada if I went with him? Would Eliana and I light Shabbat candles alone? At whose table would we sit for the Passover seder? Where would I break the fast after our Day of Atonement?

Simona reminds me I am not leaving Queluz forever. But sometimes people don’t come back. Sometimes we do, but what we want to recapture is no longer there. Only later do we realize that, without knowing it, we have already done something or seen someone for the last time. The more ordinary a thing is, the less likely we are to know the moment we lose it.

“You’ve stopped picking again.” Simona wipes her brow. “We can get the last of the pears tomorrow. Another day will do them no harm.”

One fact stares back unsaid. Jamil and I are wrong for each other as husband and wife. That thought bores holes in my heart when days pass without the sweet reassurance of being in his arms. A love that can never bring me a child? A love without the dignity of marriage? A love that, although not forbidden by either Muslims or Jews, will be viewed with suspicion and distaste by those less enlightened than Judah and Simona? Would I not live to regret what I have done if I spent—what?—perhaps years with him?

I want nothing more than that. Every dream of my future has three people in it—Eliana, Jamil, and me. Spring, fall, morning, evening, here, everywhere.

***

Word comes a few days later that the king’s party will return to Lisbon by nightfall. Simona and I have gone to the mikveh built into the compound wall, so I can purify myself to greet my lover. Though women usually go alone to perform their ritual baths, after our first immersion in the fountain in the freezing rain, my friend and I have often done it together.

The space, stuccoed white and tiled in blue and green, is no bigger than necessary to contain a bench and seven steps leading into water deep enough to cover ourselves fully, one at a time. Simona lowers herself into the water first with a contented sigh. She chants the blessing in her lovely rich voice, and I watch the top of her head disappear under the surface. She comes up smiling, water pouring off her face and body, before immersing for the second and third times. Wiping her eyes, she moves her lips in prayer, then steps out of the pool.

“Blessed art thou, Lord God, king of the universe, who makes us holy by embracing us in living waters,” I say as I step naked into the water, wiggling my toes to let it surround them. A tingling sensation travels up my spine to the nape of my neck as I lower myself into the water and lose myself in the sanctity of the moment.

Simona is wringing her hair as I get out. I sit next to her, dripping wet, enjoying the rare blessing of a calm heart and empty mind. “Jamil will want an answer about Granada when he comes,” she says, breaking the spell.

“Yes,” I say, sighing deeply as I reach for my towel. “I suppose he will.” I open my eyes to meet her expectant gaze. “I keep thinking the right answer will come to me, but it hasn’t.”

“Maybe it won’t,” Simona says. “Maybe there isn’t one right answer.” She puts her hands on my towel and massages the moisture from my hair. “What do you like about going to Granada?”

“Jamil tells me I can hear poetry every night. Musicians play and women dance, and people eat and drink until dawn.”

“And you would like that?”

Maybe it’s human nature to hoist our sails, to climb a mountain, to get on a horse and just keep riding. To risk what we have, just to see if there might be something more. Then again, what could I see of the world that could make me happier than I am right now? I stand up and stretch my body, letting the towel fall to the ground.

Simona breaks into my thoughts, reminding me I haven’t answered her. “My question is, does Jamil make you realize what you have always wanted, or does he make you want new things you probably wouldn’t if they weren’t part of him?”

I slip my chemise over my head, feeling it cling to my still-damp breasts.

“What do you want from your life, Amalia?” Her voice is soft but insistent. “Any decision about staying or leaving will come without a struggle when you understand what about your deepest self Jamil has spoken to.” She mops her brow. “We’ll never get dry in here, in all this heat. Shall we go out in the garden? We have the whole place to ourselves.”

Judah left early that morning for Lisbon, taking Eliana with him for a visit with Chana and Rahel, and all the servants have the afternoon off. Unconcerned about covering ourselves, we drape our towels on a bench in the arbor and sit down, letting the dappled sun dance on our skin.

I have been trying to think of how to respond to her, but the deepest self she spoke of is a mystery, and so far a mute one. “I’ll comb your hair,” I tell her, to fill the silence. I stand behind the bench and lay the mass of hair down her back. I work through each strand, noticing the quiet encroachment of gray. She must be close to forty now, I realize.

“How old were you when you married Judah?” I ask.

“Sixteen,” she says. “He was twenty-six and already quite a leader. I couldn’t believe I was the one he wanted.”

“I used to be so jealous of you when I was married to Diogo. I thought you had the perfect life. No one does, but I didn’t know it then.”

Simona laughs. “I was seventeen when I had Chana. I never had a chance to wonder whether there might be something more. By the time I first asked myself that, there was a baby at my breast and dinner to be made.”

“Are you sure you don’t mean something less? Less work perhaps? Not so many obligations?”

“No.” Simona does not acknowledge my teasing tone as she gets up to change places. “That’s not what I mean.” She picks up a strand of my hair. “You are the freest person I know, Amalia. I love my life, but for every bit of jealousy you may have had about me, I’m sure I’ve had just as much about you.”

“Me?”

“When Diogo was alive, my heart ached for you, but now there’s so much you can decide for yourself. Go, stay, take a lover, live alone. It’s up to you. Living here in Queluz should be your choice, not just something where you say, ‘Oh, look where I ended up,’ without knowing how it happened.”

Simona works her way through another strand of my hair. “I’d hate to see you use your confusion as an excuse not to take the gift of freedom God has granted you. Stay here if that’s what you want, but not because you can’t decide what to do.”

She touches my shoulders. “Relax,” she says. “I can see how tense you are.”

Her loving hands make it impossible to worry about anything. To my surprise, that’s all I need.

“I have to go,” I murmur.

Simona stands up straight and looks toward the door. “Did you hear horses? Is he here?”

“That’s not what I mean,” I say. “I have to go to Granada.”

14

SEVILLA 1452

Jamil, Eliana, and I set sail down the Tagus River in November. We travel south, and I strain with a tumult of emotions to see the vague outline of the promontory at Sagres, before we turn east and continue to the mouth of the Guadalquivir River on the southern coast of Spain.

Passing Sagres, I told Eliana every story I could remember about my life there, but as we near Sevilla, the city of my childhood, I fall silent. How could I explain that I once made the sign of the cross and stood in line for communion? But how else will she know what wonderful women are in our family, and how important my mother and grandmother’s conspiracies were to who I became and to who she is now?

On business in Sevilla for the Caliph of Granada, Jamil will reside at the palace of my father’s former employer, the Count of Medina-Sidonia, but Eliana and I will stay with some of Judah’s relatives. When we dock, Jamil sends a messenger to the address Judah gave, and before long, a young man approaches us, wearing a yellow circle on his chest. “I am Yakov Abravanel,” he says. “My uncle Judah told us you were coming, and we’ve been worried you wouldn’t get here by sundown.” It must be Friday, I realize. On the water, I lost track of time.

“What’s that circle on your coat?” Eliana asks.

“All the Jews wear these,” he says with a shrug.

“Where are ours, Mama?” She thinks the circle is an honor. Edicts for Jewish dress were not enforced when I lived here, and I feel a wave of uneasiness at what else I might find changed.

“We need to get some circles right away,” Eliana says, sounding at six like a little housewife. “We can sew them on when Shabbat is over.”

She takes my hand and says no more because, as far as she is concerned, there’s nothing to discuss. What could possibly be wrong with being a Jew? I say a silent blessing that she has been so well protected within the bosom of Judah and Simona’s family.

Once the carts have left with our things, we set out on foot for the Abravanel’s home. The Jewish quarter lies near the cathedral, whose massive towers are visible everywhere, and as we come through a covered arch next to the Alcazar, the church bells in the Giralda Tower ring out the hour.

Eliana stops to cover her ears, looking up at the astonishing mass of the cathedral. “They built a palace for God?” she asks, looking puzzled. I squeeze her hand, remembering how I stood miserably with my mother, watching with a sympathy so great it made me cry, as birds that had flown in through open doors flung themselves against the glass, unable to comprehend why they could not escape.

“I suppose that’s what they thought they were doing,” I reply vacantly, feeling the weight of the past pressing in around me.

We follow along the walls of the palace until we reach the tiny Jewish quarter. I expect the Abravanel’s home to be large and stately, and I am surprised when we stop in front of a door indistinguishable from any other on the dilapidated street. “They’re here!” Yakov says, throwing open the door, and we hear happy voices even before we pass the threshold.

An old man with a stooped back and a long gray beard clears his throat. In a gravelly voice, he intones the blessing for travelers. “The Lord preserve your going out and your coming in,” he adds, “from this time forth and forever.”

“Ken yehi ratzon,” I whisper. “May it be so.” I put my arm around my daughter’s tiny shoulder and pull her to me.

“The candles, Ester,” he says to a woman in her thirties who must be the mistress of the house. The moment they are lit and the blessings said, the whole family bursts into song. Eliana joins in at the top of her voice, wanting everyone to see that she knows the words by heart.