Magic Lessons (Practical Magic #0.1)(73)
Samuel was right, and she knew it. What was forcibly brought back from death never came back as it was. One lived or died as fate saw fit. It was possible to shift one’s destiny depending on choices that had been made, but some things were meant to be, they had been written and could not be unwritten. Abraham Dias’s time had come. On both hands, his lifelines had reached the ends of his palms. Maria stopped fighting a war she couldn’t win. She washed and dressed, then watched Samuel from the window as he sat alone in the garden, waiting to lose the last member of his family.
When it was clear that Abraham was about to die, Maria intended to call Samuel to his bedside, but the old man stopped her. He placed a hand on her arm and managed to speak. The man who could talk for hours at a time, and had taught his son to do the same, still had some breath left. When a person was about to die, nothing could prevent him from talking if he had something to say.
“I need you alone,” he told her. “So you understand Samuel.” Maria sat beside Abraham to listen to his last story, and she wasn’t surprised to hear it was about his love for his son.
“My boy was eleven years old when it happened,” he began. While he spoke, he appeared younger, as if he’d gone back to that time. “I will not begin to tell you how clever he was, every father will tell you that about his son. But I will tell you that no one has as big a heart. The midwife told us so when he was born, she said it filled up his chest, and even before his birth, I could put my ear to my wife’s stomach and hear it beat, it was so loud, I knew he would not be like anyone else.
“We were not home when the terrible thing happened. We had gone into the forest, to meet with the owner of a ship, a man who swore he would take us far from the perils of Portugal. Everyone wanted to go to Amsterdam, and we were willing to pay whatever was asked. It turned out the man we met was a liar and took our most precious belongings: a strand of gold that belonged to my wife, a silver prayer cup, and two strands of pearls my daughters were meant to wear on their wedding days.
“We rushed back home, expecting to fetch my wife and the girls so they could join us in the woods, but it was too late. My wife was taken; my daughters were gone. I told Samuel not to leave the house, but as you know he will never do as he’s told. He went out into the square, searching for his sisters and mother. Our family had come to Portugal from the city of Toledo in Castile, Spain, then known by its Arabic name, Tulaytulah. We thought we would be safe in this new country, we had paid a high price to enter Portugal. Our family had been forcibly converted, but we practiced our religion in secret. The madness continued, with autos-de-fé, mass murders of conversos. It was a world of black and gold and then a world of blood. Samuel saw everything that day. The hoods they made our people wear, the lashings they gave them, the fires that burned. Flesh became ash; body became soul. Afterward he did not speak, not a word.
“We stole the ship we were promised with the help of our neighbors who were to travel with us. I murdered the ship owner and his captain; I kept the crew who would be loyal to us and killed the rest. I made them jump into the sea and had no compassion when they drowned. That was what my life had done to me.
“Samuel sat in silence with the navigator, a Jew named Lazarus, and that was how he learned to follow the stars. I thought he might never speak again, but he did, almost two years later, soon after his thirteenth birthday. He had become a man while we were searching for a place where we might be safe. We went to Brazil, but the Inquisition had followed the Portuguese to the new land they had claimed. At last we made our way to Cura?ao, where people such as ourselves were allowed to live. We were in shallow seas when Samuel jumped off the bow. He yelled out ‘Look, Papa!’ I didn’t even recognize his voice because it had changed. He was a man with a man’s voice, but he still had a boy’s joy, for on this day he recognized the beauty of the world. There he was, riding on a dolphin’s back. I could hear him laughing. It was the day I had hoped for. I knew that as long as he kept talking he would be all right. That is why I’m telling you this, Maria. Don’t let him be silent.”
The old man had taken her hand in his. He still wore his wedding ring, for Jews had given such tokens to one another since the tenth century as a declaration of love and faith. His was decorated with Hebrew symbols for luck, fashioned out of gold filigree and blue enamel. It was his greatest treasure. He had worn it for so long he could barely move it past his swollen knuckle; now when he did there was a deep indentation around his finger, the mark of his married life. He asked Maria to give the ring to Samuel, then told her that after his death he wished to be wrapped in white cloth and placed into the ground without a coffin so that he might become one with the earth. He was accustomed to living on land. He had come to love New York, and the sea was only a memory. You never know what you want or need until you are old, for old age is a mystery that is impossible to unwind until you step into its maze. Thorn, blood, earth, love—that was the riddle that Abraham Dias held in his hand.
Maria wept as he was dying. Her tears burned her and left red marks on her face, and Abraham asked her not to cry. Instead he asked for something else, a last wish that could not be denied, one he had been thinking about every minute of every day during his last months. He wished for her to take care of his son.
“Of course,” Maria assured him.
“I mean in every way,” the old man urged. “The way a man needs to be cared for. With all your heart.”