That day my mother, Magdalena, was wrapped in a light silk shawl, with her dark hair loose and combed out to dry; it hung in damp strands over her shoulders, falling half an arm’s length past the seat of her chair. The hair at her neck had been lifted so that it fell over the back of her chair, the better to expose it to the sun and air. In her hands—the fingers stained blue from the crushed lapis used to mix paint for the Madonna’s mantle—were a needle and an infant’s unfinished christening gown. Although she had just lost another baby, she was resolutely determined to finish the gown, which had grown increasingly elaborate after each lost child—as if by making the garment irresistibly pretty, she might lure the next unborn soul into surviving nine months in her womb.
In those days, I thought of my mother as a saint as holy as the Virgin Mary, for I had never seen Magdalena angry nor heard a sharp word come out of her mouth, and she was always taking food and delivering it personally to the poor, even those in the decimated Jewish Quarter. And my mother was more beautiful than any image of Mary I had ever seen. On those evenings my father brought home a new diplomat or municipal official to dine with us, I smiled internally each time the man first set eyes upon doña Magdalena, for he never failed to catch his breath and widen his eyes until his senses returned to him. My mother was gracious enough to pretend she hadn’t noticed the man’s reaction, and for love of my father, she wore typical Spanish matron’s high-necked, dark clothing and no jewelry save her wedding band and a small gold crucifix.
My father had worked as a government official his entire life, and when I was a girl, there were often times that I would go into his office and look at the finely detailed maps of Seville spread across his desk. I’d taught myself to find our house’s location and would touch the tip of my finger to the landmarks I knew: the sprawling, rarely visited Royal Palace known as the Real Alcázar, to our southeast, across from the Cathedral of Seville, the largest in all the world; nearby, the Convent of the Incarnation and its orphanage, where my mother was raised; and next to it, the Hospital of Santa Marta, where my parents met and fell in love. Viewed from an eagle’s perspective, the winding Guadalquivir River bisected the city; the curves of the more populous east bank looked to me just like the profile of an exceptionally buxom woman from collarbone to narrow waist. Nestled just inland, in the swell of her great breast, stood the huge Dominican cloister with its Church of San Pablo, and east of that, our house, and still farther east, our family Church of San Francisco, whose large plaza served as the city square. On either side of the river stood centuries-old watchtowers, one of them twelve-sided and known as the Torre de Oro, the Tower of Gold. In times of danger, these were connected by a huge chain used to prevent ships from sailing farther upstream. The city itself was flat; one had to ride farther east before the land grew rolling, covered with alfalfa or wheat or endless rows of olive trees with their dusty fruit.
That particular afternoon, my mother and I were both happy and smiling at each other because it was the first time she had risen from her bed in a week after losing another baby and consequently suffering a fever. Although there were still faint depressions of dark purple in the inner corners of her eyes, she’d left her bed at noon, bathed, and washed her hair, then put on her dressing gown and asked her servant, Máriam, to bring food up to her chambers—her first real meal since the miscarriage. I had combed her wet hair out carefully, so that the damp strands fanned out over her back and shoulders like a cloak, and encouraged her to take her shawl so that she wouldn’t get chilled. When her hair dried, Máriam would plait it and wrap the long, fat braid in white silk, which she bound with black cord in a crisscross pattern.
She had leaned down then and pressed her hand to my eleven-year-old cheek. “Sweet Marisol,” she said. “My beautiful girl. You’re too young to be looking after your mother.” She stroked her palm against my skin. “You needn’t worry about me now. Besides, I have Máriam to take care of me.”
Impulsively, I hugged her. After she gathered up her sewing, we went out onto her balcony so that the breeze would dry her hair faster. It was perfect April weather, not long after Santa Semana, Holy Week—with its endless solemn processions through winding neighborhood streets, led by parish priests bearing flower-adorned statues of the Virgin Mary—but before the spring fair, when each extended family erected a tent for feasting and dancing. The winter rains had stopped, and the unfiltered sun was not yet harsh; even though it was early afternoon, it was still pleasant enough so that we hadn’t yet taken up the summertime necessity of the siesta.
Even though my mother’s balcony was cramped—she always set the smaller statues out there to dry, leaving barely enough room for our two chairs—I loved it far better than our large, covered second-floor balcony with the ethereal Moorish colonnade, where my father entertained. I loved it because my mother was usually with me, and because her geraniums grew joyously there all year-round, mounding over their pots to creep between the crevices in the railing. That afternoon, the pungent fragrance of their blatant red blooms mixed with the sweet smell of orange blossoms on the tree below us, the latter so close I could have touched a leaf had I leaned far enough over the railing. I would never have plucked a fruit from it though; the oranges were sour as lemons, good only for flavoring marmalade or perfuming lotion. I pulled my chair closer to my mother and sat with my leg pressed against hers as she pulled the needle through the gossamer lawn of the christening gown. I eventually wormed my whole body so close to hers—I’d been terrified of losing her—that she smiled indulgently, set her sewing aside, and patted her lap.
I laid my head upon it gingerly. It was firm, not soft, and her thighbones were prominent. I looked up to see my mother smiling down at me as she stroked my head, her damp hair falling forward like a veil, lying cool upon my bare arms.
I spent a fleeting moment of joy in my mother’s lap, listening to the sounds of older neighborhood boys as they gathered for their customary Sunday game of kickball in the street below. Behind me, from my mother’s bedroom, the servant Máriam called out: “Doña Magdalena!”
Máriam’s voice was low and resonant in the way that great orators’ and singers’ voices are. My mother sighed and turned to look over her shoulder, reluctant to leave me; I didn’t stir but held my breath, as if by doing so, I could somehow make her stay.
Apparently the look on Máriam’s face was urgent enough that my mother patted my shoulder briskly, asking me to rise. As she left and stepped into the bedroom, I sat up straight on my little stool and frowned at the players down in the street. Fourteen youths, almost all from the Hojedas’ parish of San Pablo, were pulling their Sunday tunics over their heads to reveal white lawn undershirts, sheer enough to show the masculine sweep and sinew of their newly muscular backs and shoulders. They rolled back the long, full sleeves of the white undershirts to reveal gloriously strong young arms. The tunics were folded and set aside, and the players divided into two teams, seven apiece. They faced each other in the street between our house and the Hojedas’; a dozen or so younger boys, too small to play, had gathered along the edges to cheer on their older brothers and cousins.
Seventeen-year-old Gabriel was captain of the Lions—symbol of the kings of Spain—and he stood in the center of his team lineup, his hair white in the sun, the brown ball placed carefully upon the cobblestone in front of his right foot. He was the tallest boy, already barrel-chested, with massive shoulders and long, thick limbs that had sprouted almost overnight, making his head look small by comparison. What he couldn’t achieve in speed and accuracy, he made up for with solid brute force. I stared lazily down as Gabriel’s booted toe met the ball with a solid, ringing thunk and watched it fly over the heads of the Imperial Eagles, the opposite team. Against the sudden cacophony of shouts and scuffling, I heard my mother’s voice rise, panicked, in the bedroom behind me.
“He can’t stay,” she was telling the servant, Máriam. “Make him go away at once!”
Máriam murmured an unintelligible
reply.
“Then tell him to leave it!” my mother commanded her. “Hurry…”
There was more, but the players’ roars drowned it out. Although the alarm in my mother’s voice troubled me, I blotted it out, unwilling to interrupt my happiness. Instead, I focused my attention on the game. One of the Lions—a short, swift, wiry boy—had just succeeded in stealing the ball from the Eagles and was kicking it through enemy territory in the direction of the goal: a pile of crumbling stone at the end of the cul-de-sac, where the cobblestone disappeared and the old olive grove began. Most likely, the stone was the last remnants of a Roman column or caretaker’s dwelling, bleached bone from centuries of exposure to the Iberian sun. I leaned forward as the Eagle’s captain, tall and spindly, wormed his way past all defenders to retake the ball, to renewed cheering.
Heated tempers and physical violence were the only rules in this particular game. I watched as Gabriel lumbered into the other captain’s path and delivered an elbow to his head, which disoriented him enough so that Gabriel could capture the ball with the side of his large foot.
Despite the fresh noise and excitement this generated—and despite my growing curiosity and unease over the fact that my mother had not rejoined me on the balcony but remained waiting in her bedroom for Máriam’s return—my gaze wandered away from the players to the spectators, where it caught a gleam of dazzling red-gold. A willowy fourteen-year-old boy was standing near the Hojedas’ house, beneath a tree covered with white blossoms and bright ripe oranges. He had reached up to pluck a piece of fruit, and the sun had caught his hair, which was the astonishing color of pale gold mixed with copper. Forgetting my concern, I smiled at him. Somehow he sensed my presence and looked up to return my smile.
The boy was Antonio Vargas, three years my senior. He lived on the property to our immediate north, which abutted the empty lot dotted with gnarled, untended olive trees at the end of the cul-de-sac. Like the Hojedas, the Vargases were Old Christians, but there the comparison ended. Antonio’s father, don Pedro, was firm in his belief that all converts were equal before God, and he did his best to make my family feel welcome and at ease; when the weather was inclement or my mother was too frail to walk, the Vargases invited us to ride with them on Sundays or holidays to the Church of San Francisco, our mutual parish. My father socialized with don Pedro, and we were always welcome at each other’s table; the wife, doña Elena, was warm and kindly and always brought food and comfort when my mother was sick. Being a girl, I was forbidden to play with their son Antonio without a chaperone—but none of our parents knew about the hole in the stone fence separating the sprawling gardens behind our houses. When I was five and Antonio eight, he grew tired of whispering to me through the gap in the stone and had widened it so that he could wriggle through onto our property. Out of sight of the gardeners, he and I climbed the limbs of the tallest olive tree in Seville, and there we exchanged our secrets.
The smile I shared with Antonio in the street was fleeting; I looked away quickly so that no other boy would notice our affectionate exchange and taunt him.
Fortunately, all other gazes were fixed on the Lions team, as Gabriel and his best friend, a hooligan of a player named Miguel, quickly advanced the ball down the street toward the ancient pile of rubble that marked the goal. My gaze soon followed, and with dozens of boys, I reacted as an intruder moved onto the playing field.
His stooped back was to me, and I assumed that he was an old mendicant monk. He wore an ankle-length black linen cloak with a raised hood, and he leaned upon a great wooden walking stick, heavily favoring one leg. He had been making his way down our side of the street, past our house and then the Vargases’ when he darted into the cul-de-sac at the very end of the street, apparently thinking to take a shortcut through the abandoned orchard.
He must have been fairly deaf, since he seemed unaware of the small army of young men hurtling toward him at top speed. Behind him, both Gabriel and Miguel shouted for him to move aside, while the others began to whoop with excitement. He didn’t turn to look back at them but limped toward the goalpost of ancient rubble with increasing velocity. Miguel and the closely following Eagle defenders veered off in time to keep from hitting the old man, but the Lions screamed for their captain to kick the goal; this caused noticeable consternation for Gabriel, who couldn’t decide between chivalry and winning. At the last instant, he glanced over his shoulder at his teammates, as if trying to gauge the depth of their determination—but he was still running at full tilt, and the act caused him to lose the ball and slam into the old monk’s back.
Pushed from the street onto the softer earth of the old orchard, the old man fell facedown, tangled in his black robe; his walking stick flew forward, struck a tree trunk, and rebounded back into the street, clattering against the cobblestones. Gabriel ran to him as Miguel went to fetch the stick, while all the other boys, silent and solemn, hurried to gather around them. Gabriel looked terrified; his older brother Alonso was already abbot of San Pablo by then, and Fray Alonso and don Jerónimo would punish him severely for any harm done to a monk. Gabriel kept glancing over his shoulder at his father’s shaded second-floor balcony, as if expecting to hear don Jerónimo’s angry voice any instant.
The street had grown so hushed I could hear Gabriel’s voice break with nerves as he extended his hand to the fallen man. “Brother?” he asked timidly. “Forgive me. Are you injured?”
For an instant, the old man lay as still as the dead. But soon he began to move again, slowly, gathering his arms and legs beneath him and pushing himself up. With Gabriel holding his hands, he struggled to his knees, and when he finally stood up and the black hood slipped down to reveal his face, gasps escaped the onlookers. I stood up and strained against the north corner of the balcony railing; the old man’s long white beard, streaked with black, hung to his waist, and long white waves of hair fell from his balding crown to well past his shoulders.
In those days, Christian men kept their hair short and their faces shaved so as not to be mistaken for what the old man was.
Miguel, who was in the midst of proffering the old man his wooden stick, drew it back suddenly as the man reached for it; this movement brought the latter’s oddly flat profile into my view. Only his large, dark eyes were visible above a dark scarf, which he had tied behind his head to cover his nose, mouth and chin.
“He’s a Jew!” Miguel shouted, in a tone that conveyed anger, scorn, and delight. With one hand, he pulled the black cloak from the man’s shoulders. Beneath it, his tunic—of the same worn, coarse black cloth—sported a red disc cut from fabric and pinned over the heart.
“A filthy Jew!” Miguel bellowed again. “One who breaks the law by trying to hide what he is!” The latter statement was true; the old man should have pinned the badge of shame to his cloak, but I saw forgetfulness, not sinister intent, in the act. “And worse, covering his face like a bandit!”
As the old man reached vainly for his walking stick, Miguel taunted him with it, keeping it just out of reach.
The other youths began to hurl insults and accusations. “Stinking Jew!” “Christ killer!” “Did you come here to poison the wells?” “Look at him, sneaking around our neighborhood in disguise!” “He’s looking for a Christian baby to murder!”
I felt a sickening prickle of heat on my cheeks and neck. By then, I was well aware that Jews were an object of scorn—a fact that ashamed me, since I had overheard others call my mother a conversa and had realized that Jewish blood ran in my veins, too, and that the fact somehow made me different from the other children in our neighborhood.
Gabriel, who had been supporting the man’s elbow in an effort to keep him upright, let go and turned back toward the crowd, his expression reluctant and perplexed. Clearly, he didn’t want to do what his teammates expected of him, yet he was obviously swayed by their opinion.
“Get the Jew!” one of the older Lions shouted at his captain. “He cost us a goal! Uncover his face! What is he doing in this barrio on
a Sunday, anyway?”
“Get the Jew! Get the Jew!” the crowd began to chant. Gabriel squared his shoulders and hardened his expression.
At the same instant, Miguel gripped the base of the walking stick with both hands, swung it back over his right shoulder, then brought it down upon the Jew’s stooped back. The old man took a wobbly step forward and sank to his knees as the onlookers roared with approval.