Free Lucena by Mois Benarroch Page B

don’t notice. It’s one of those old keys for the antique doors. I’m sure you have seen one. Little by little they have been disappearing. Perhaps it could open a door here in Málaga, in Melilla or in Lucena. Before, Lucena was an important city. I have read that. You see, Samuel, I read books too. Do you need money?”
    “This time I don’t want money. I want answers.”
    “I remember when I was a little girl – How interesting that I hadn’t remembered it until today- once two aunts of mine were talking in the kitchen by the pots and pans. I remember they were talking about someone very old who always looked young and came to take one of the young Benzimra girls, would marry her and then would disappear leaving her with a lot of money to marry her. Sometimes they called him el del sielo and sometimes el dembasho , He who comes from heaven and he who comes from hell. They talked about one who came in from the mountains, he had a lot of gold and he wanted to marry her little sister and she was thirteen.
    They debated between them whether to approve or not, because it was evident he would end up disappearing. In the end, he disappeared before the wedding. He left in the same way that he had arrived but he left her a box with some gold rings that were worth a lot of money. Maybe that was him, maybe not. The rings were the engagement gift.
    “I don’t know, seriously, I don’t, know what to tell you. I have never known anyone who was a thousand years old, and if I have, I didn’t notice.”
    “I am looking at you. You are ninety, and you look old. But how would someone one thousand years old look? Certainly they can’t look old because if they have arrived at such an exaggerated age it is because they can continue being young, because they have a certain amount of antioxidants which avoid ageing.”
    “What are animoxilantes?”
    “It doesn’t matter. The issue is that he has some substances in his body that avoid ageing, so because of that he looks young, that it‘s logical, and evidently he looks younger that he is. A lot younger, because it could be said that he looks to be under forty.”
    “I would like to meet him.”
    “Impossible. I can’t talk about him. I only say that if you tell anyone nobody will believe you so I advise you not to do it because if anyone knew about it, poor me and poor him.
    ––––––––
    S O YOU BECAME A PRIEST?
    “It is my mission.”
    “You know your mother died to avoid being a Christian, and you want to be a priest.”
    “Jesus called me. Jesus let me live so I may be his servant.”
    “That is worse than converting.”
    “Repent and save your soul papa.”
    “I converted to stay alive, not to see you dressed in this robe.”
    “You have to repent to enter the kingdom of God.”
    “If I don’t you will send me to the Inquisition?”
    “I am the Inquisition.”
    “You? Are you telling me that you are the one who submits your brothers, the Jews, your “Marranos” your peers, like me, like your brothers and sisters?”
    “I do it to save them from hell. I do it out of love.”
    “What kind of love burns children alive? What kind of love forces people to change religion?
    What kind of love kills my wife, your mother, Sultana? What kind of love burns my house to the ground? Maybe she was right. That cruel night, it would have been better for you to have died, then and there, to not have to see you like this. How can I say that? How can I live the years left to me? I wish I had seen you dead, and not killing our own people.”
    “Don’t talk about that. The hour has come for you to return to your God. I will take you to the Tribunal so you can demonstrate your repentance and be absolved.”
    “To the Tribunal? With your own hands?”
    “They wanted to send another priest. But I preferred to do it myself.”
    “Yes, I did it. To save you.”
    “No, my son. I’m not going. You can kill me here and now. I just ask one thing. Let me escape. Say