She looks at him carefully. His eyes are slightly sunken — tiredness or worry or nothing at all? They brightened when she smiled at him, which fills her with guilt. There is an ink stain on his cheek. She has been preoccupied with Yishai and his quest for teshuvah, and trying to placate Bellida with a new wardrobe, she has barely spared a thought for her younger son. But perhaps it is his fault. He is always trying to fade, eager to become part of the desk and the chair or the tree or maybe even the air. She wonders why he always tries to leach himself of color.

“Come for a walk with me.”

He takes the arm that she proffers. “This is not like you.”

She smiles. “No, it is not, is it?

“How are you, Amram, how is the family? It is strange, is it not, how we occupy the same courtyard and work on the same endeavors, and yet when we talk, it is about signing documents and selecting agents and reviewing the exact wording of a document.”

“Indeed.” He hesitates. “You look well without an abacus.”

They have reached the end of the path and turn onto the road that leads toward the batei knesset. She laughs. “Do you think I work too hard? I try to make time for a little leisure.”

“I would like my daughters to know their grandmother more,” he says.

“When they are old enough, I shall explain to them how to draft a document or weigh up the worthiness of an investment.” How old are they, anyway? She cannot quite remember. “Have you heard about the Wall?”

He quickens his pace and she finds herself slightly breathless as she tries to keep up with him. When she looks at his profile, his cheek is taut. Interesting. What complaints does he have?

They stop outside the beit knesset where Rav Shlomo Alkabetz prays. “Amram?”

He looks up at the sky. “Yes.”

“The Wall of Jerusalem. What have you to say?”

He turns to face her, but a large juniper bush hangs from the courtyard wall, and the leaves obscure his face. “It is not so much what I have to say, Mama. It is what the scholars say. The chachamim and those who know the people in high-up places, and yes, also the people of the street. They are unsure.”

She waves a hand impatiently through the air. “People are always unsure. That is why there are so few leaders today.”

“Should a leader not look at every side?”

“Of course. But then he should make a clear, firm choice and banish all opposition.”

“And there is something else he should do, Mama.”

An old, gray donkey walks past, without a rider. The sight makes Leonora smile. “What is that?”

“He should pray.”

She watches as the donkey breaks into a trot. It certainly has a destination in mind.

“Well, then, let us pray.”

She waits, curious as to what he will do next; surely he will wait for her to dictate, but if the donkey knows its mind then — her mind resists following that comparison to the end. It is unfair. Or perhaps it is fair, but in bad taste.

She gestures to the door of the beit knesset. “I have been taken to the seat where Rav Cordovero teaches the secret wisdom of the Torah. For a few coins, I sat down and was able to make some requests.”

He bites his lip, looks up to the sky. The sun is still high; the afternoon stretches ahead of them. His voice is quiet but strong. “Then let us pray at the ancient kevarim that lay on the hill at the edge of the town.”

She has never been here, though stories and legends rise up from the place like mist rolling in from a valley. Something passes through her — it feels like it might be fear — but she can’t pinpoint the source.

She inclines her head in agreement and follows his lead as he steps through the town to the outskirts, to the hill dotted with scrubby olive branches, thornbushes of rust and ochre. Here and there are burial caves, dark mouths of the hillside, open lips whispering of worlds before and after, of dust and life and the mystery of how there is a tiny inward breath between moments and death — ready, crouching — pounced. Time bends, loops, shatters; the fragments are scattered by the wind; a body is clasped by fingers of black earth and yellow dust.

In the distance, the rise and fall of mountain and valley, dun and evergreen, a haze of purple, the blue of a winding river. So beautiful that it makes her heart ache.

Amram stops by a cave and points to the name engraved on a stone: Hoshea ben Be’eri.

“The navi Hoshea. Can you imagine, Mama. He had a body, he lived and walked these hills, and here he rests.”

They pause, offer a whispered prayer, and continue.

So many broken, tumbledown gravestones. So many caves dug into the hillside as if all they want to do is to remain hidden for their eternal rest. The wildflowers that grow beside them do not hint that there is death here, only tranquility and life, only nature. She looks into the distance, allows the warm wind to caress her face, and her soul, too, is soothed.

Further down the hill, near ground that is strewn with rocks, Amram stops. “Here, Mama. Let us pray here. They say that this place carries up your prayers.”

Leonora looks more closely.

“They say it is the burial place of Chana and her seven sons,” Amram says, pointing.

She stops short. What is he thinking? Panic wells up inside her. She wanted to go for a short, sweet stroll, that was all.

He continues, oblivious. “You do know the story, do you not?”

She looks at him, the pain flooding her body. She nods, dumb.

Which woman does not know the story? Papa had hired the best teachers for her, they had woven stories in with the texts, and faith into the stories.

One child after the next, one child after the next.

Amram closes his eyes and begins to sway gently, as his lips move. She stares at his profile. Is he not her son? How can he not understand? How can he not know?

Then her eyes turn to rest on the burial cave.

Chana’s story is simple, so simple. Live or die. Be faithful or betray. As she called out, Avraham only gave You one child, I give you seven. Seven children became seven corpses and then she put an end to her own life.

Her heart twists. This is a story about death; what about when you are offered life? There is no one with a sword. Your children will not be sacrificed.

She has forgotten her daughter’s tiny face, the features, but she has not forgotten the warmth and weight of her. Of late, every time the sun strokes the pomegranate tree, she thinks of her little pink cheeks. Every little kitten that cries makes her startle, look around.

Shabbat Hagadol, the children were taken. The soldiers and the police and the armed guards of the king went from house to house, and they tried to hide the children in the closets and under the rafters and even in the ovens, like the frogs in Egypt, but they found them, they found them all. They took them to the church and they baptized them and then they said, if you want your children, then come and convert.

Oh, the tumult. The discussions. The questions asked and the Sages who shook their heads and said, we do not know what to do. The wives who raged at their husbands and called them mules for their obduracy and the men who found their wives to be strangers.

The nine rabbis who entered a church and made as if to convert, but instead broke the graven images and spilled out the wine and snapped the cross so that the noise of splintering wood echoed up to the great eaves and was carried up to heaven by the birds that perched on the rooftops with the cry — if our recitation of the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy is not enough, accept this in its place: the crack and crash and screams.

There were those who converted and then quietly took their children and ran, ran for their lives. And there were those who arranged for their newly Christian children to be taken in by friends, hoping that in a month or maybe a year, they could reclaim them as their own. And all the while, no ship could leave the harbor, no Jew could flee.

Oh, the horror, the horror of those times.

Who knew what to do? Which sage knew how to answer?

If the child is abandoned, the mother…

It is hard to breathe, hard to stand, Leonora staggers backwards and leans against a large rock — the mother will never forgive herself. Will she ever find comfort in the faith that caused her to surrender her child?

And if she converts — how many times did she see this? — then she still does not have her child, for hatred festers inside, a newfound hatred that this child made her do the unthinkable.

The two things that are most precious are lost. The light of her faith is snuffed out. And her child is lost, either to the church or to the burden of guilt and shame.

Where is the choice? Where?

When all of this had first happened, when they were not in the accursed Portugal, but still in Spain and the decree had come that they must be exiled, Papa had called her in and opened one of the great, holy books that lined his room and made him the envy of all the town. He had sat her down next to him and opened a book and the page was worn and the corner thumbed, no longer a sharp right angle, but dog-eared. And he had read out:

“The Almighty will answer you on the day of your troubles. To what can this be compared? A father and son were walking along the way. The son grew weary and said: ‘Father, where is the country of our destination?’ The father answered: ‘My son, this will be a sign for you: If you see a graveyard, the destination is nearby.’ So the prophet said to Yisrael: if troubles overwhelm you, immediately you will be redeemed, as it says, Hashem will answer you on your day of trouble.”

He had closed the book with a finality that had made her fingers tremble and her heart jump. “This is what our Sages say on the words in Tehillim.”

She had nodded. The graveyard had haunted her dreams and the next morning, Ines had remonstrated with Mama about scaring a little girl.

This is life, then, moment after intolerable moment, as you tread closer and closer to the destination and inch between each of the graves as you walk.

How can it mean anything but redemption? For how else could we live in this way, behind the veil that has come down between us and our Creator, and we are left, tugging and pulling, ripping at the fibers that do not tear and that cannot be broken, trying to glimpse Him, but if He is not gone, lost, hidden, then we must be gone, lost, hidden.

Amram is still absorbed in his prayer. Here, inside this cave, Chana and her seven sons.

Perhaps this is why Chana left This World. Because after… afterwards, how could she live with the pain and still cling to her faith? But how could she not? Perhaps she hovered on this seamline between courage and confusion, both impossible, and felt this was her only recourse?

She trembles. Suddenly, she is weak. She wants to lie on the ground, let the sun surround her, warm her, dissolve her. But instead, she summons the last of her strength and runs.

She runs to the wool factory.

The wet wool is strung up. It has been half beaten, but most of it is still sodden, though the edges have dried in the sun. A smell rises from it: part animal, part mold. Her best Merino wool. The sheep that she has spent a small fortune on bringing over from Spain. The blankets that will buy Hurrem Sultan the support of the Janissaries, and will gain her the patronage of Hurrem Sultan, so that the great wall around Jerusalem will proceed without a hitch.

Fury rises inside her, red and hot and molten.

If there are no workers, and there are no children to do the job, then she shall do it herself.

She picks up a bound switch of branches. She raises it over her head and brings it down onto the wet wool. Thwack. A spray of water hits her face, but she does not wipe it away. Again, she lifts the wooden stick high over her head. Again and again. Anger prickles through her arms, her fingers, spreading into her fists and then with an almighty blow, she trammels it into the stick and the wool and the pain and the betrayal that is this world.

to be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 817)