Free Torquemada by Howard Fast Page B

not!”
    Softly but bitterly Alvero said, “Sit down, Maria, sit down! Do you understand me? I said you are to sit down, Maria.” Alvero nodded as his wife obeyed him and resumed her place at the table. “What will you not have? The Jew in you? The Jew in me? The Jew in Catherine? The Jew in Juan?”
    Juan shook his head fiercely. He opened his mouth to speak, licked his lips and then shook his head again. His skin had become white as paste, and to Catherine it seemed that his dark eyes were staring out of a sort of death’s head mask.
    â€œWhat? Come, Juan Pomas,” Alvero whispered. “Do you deny this?”
    Totally unnerved, Juan sprang to his feet, leaned over the table towards Alvero and demanded pleadingly, “What are you doing, Don Alvero? In God’s name, what are you doing to me? I am a Christian. You know that I am a Christian.”
    â€œA Christian?” Alvero asked, smiling. “Of course you are a Christian, Juan Pomas. Do I deny that? But your great-grandfather, Jacob Pomas, was a rabbi. Will you make a Christian of him?”
    â€œI am a Christian,” Juan pleaded.
    Maria rose now, her face dark as the night, stormed away from the table towards the door of the refectory, halted then, turned back to Alvero until she was close enough for him to hear her whisper. She whispered to him hoarsely, “You are mad! You have lost your mind! You are mad! You are insane! You are a thing that they bind and put away!”
    â€œAm I mad?” Alvero asked tiredly. “Really, Maria, do you think I am mad or am I simply practical? Is there a noble family in all of Spain without Jewish blood? Is there, Maria? Was your own mother half-Jewish or not?”
    â€œLies,” Maria shouted now. “How do you dare to sit there and lie and blaspheme?”
    Alvero nodded. “Yes, my dear wife. Our whole existence is a lie, a riddle, perhaps an epitaph. I don’t know; I think we have a mortal sickness and we are dying. I think that Spain is dying too.”
    Alvero picked up the ampule and held it between his fingers. Her voice very calm, almost indifferent, Catherine asked him,
    â€œWhat is that, Father? You say that it has a bit of parchment in it. Is anything written on the parchment?”
    Maria and Juan did not move now. They were listening. Then, as Alvero began to speak, Juan sank back into his chair as if hope were fleeing too fast for him ever to overtake it.
    â€œThey call it the Jewish curse,” Alvero said. “It is a thing that Jews put on the doorposts of their houses. It has this little piece of parchment in it and on the parchment in Hebrew letters it says, ‘And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and all thy soul and all thy might.’”
    Maria covered her face with her hands and began to sob. That way, sobbing, stumbling, half-blinded behind the curtain of her hands, she moved out of the refectory. When she had gone, the three sat in silence for a minute or two and then Catherine said to her father.
    â€œOnly that?”
    Alvero rose. “Only that, my child – only that. I must go to your mother now. She is deeply disturbed. I don’t know why I did it to her. Believe me, I have never done this to her before.”
    Then Alvero walked out of the refectory, but Juan and Catherine continued to sit at the table. Catherine reached across the table for the chain, picked it up and fingered the cross and the ampule. She played with these two things as she would have touched the beads in a rosary. Then Juan said to her,
    â€œCatherine? Please, Catherine?”
    â€œWhat is it, Juan?”
    Juan did not answer, only sat there; and looking at him now Catherine asked him why he was afraid. She asked this very simply and very directly. “Why are you so afraid? Do you hate my father for this thing?”
    Still Juan did not answer. Catherine held out the chain to him. He drew back as if it bore a