The Apprentice's Masterpiece (5 page)

He wants to say Friday prayers
at the mosque across town.
Papa agrees, but pats the air
with his hands. That means he's upset.
Or, rather:
he's scared.

What if Amir makes new friends and talks
about what Papa has in that wall?
(He speaks in two tongues, after all!)

Or maybe Papa is scared
for
Amir—
for his safety.
The way he once worried
over only me.

You'll say that I'm feeling self-pity.
Am I not justified?

Sure enough, Papa says,
“Amir, you may go, but Ramon
must go with you.”

So the master's been made
servant to the slave!

Shades of Blue

I take it all back.
Forget I complained.

May Allah be praised!
I like these Fridays.

Today a bona fide miracle
came down for this boy.
An angel made flesh.

The Mudejar quarter is tucked
in a corner of Cordoba
as if it is hiding.
Maybe it is.

No matter.
Today was the first truly warm
day this year. While Amir went to pray,
I lay on a rock by the Guadalquivir,
admiring the sky. What kind of blue?
Indigo? No. Cerulean?

Azure, I decided.
Don't be too impressed.
These are colors of inks!
Scribes can recite them
as effortlessly
as priests can count sins.

Shades of Blue (2)

I thought I knew blue.
I hadn't met
her
.

She was washing some clothes at the shore,
laughing and singing with three silly friends.

I made my way over.
In my best imitation
of a rich, courtly knight,
I bowed very low.
(For once, I am glad
of those how-to books!)

The girls laughed. But my angel
fixed me with her eyes.
Those
don't need fancy nicknames.
They're simply, exquisitely,
blue.

She plucked a white flower from
behind her ear.
I have it here now.
Its softness is brittle,
like Egyptian papyrus, the plant
the ancients once used for paper.

The petals so light, they practically float
in my palm.
But the flower is here.
It's as real as a promise.

Divining

The
S
rises and falls
so evenly.
His sleep must be deep.

The book is Amir's.
I know that I'm risking
our thin, eggshell peace.
I feel like I stand
by the Guadalquivir,
knowing that I,
in a heartbeat,
could jump.

But I'm haunted.
Beatriz Alvarez.
That's her name.
The sounds of those vowels
can bubble my blood.

I must know this:
should I pledge her my love?
I know that I want to.
But how will she act?

Will she laugh in my face?

Amir keeps Hafiz tucked under
his thin square of pillow, just as a girl
might do with her doll.
There!
I have it.
He doesn't stir.

I sneak to a corner.
Squeeze my eyes shut.
A page near the middle.
My finger nests in.
Then his voice, from the bed:
“Next time, at least,
leave your feather pillow
behind as a trade!”

Code

I don't turn around.
I'll try to read quickly:
he'll soon snatch it up.

It's nothing but squiggles!

I roar at Amir.
“You slippery thing!
You never said
it was written in code!”

He's still wiping sleep from his eyes—
but his smirk is awake, you can bet.
“It is Arabic. The tongue
of my father—”

“I
know
what it is.
No one can think of anything else
since you came to this house!”

I make to storm out, then—
here's a new thought.
I grab his high collar.

“Teach me!” I shout.

For a heart-thumping minute
I think he might strike me.
I half wish he would.
For a slave to do that to a free man
means death.

Papa is there.
“Ramon! What is wrong?
It's not even dawn!
Why are you shouting
to wake up the dead?”

A Caution

The Arabic lessons
don't go very well.
The letters entwine, run together
like droplets of water.
They skitter and swim
from under my eyes.
These aren't the curves
I care for right now.

Amir won't give up.
I can tell that he's back feeling
sorry for me.

On none of our walks
have we seen Beatriz.

The Queen's royal joust
is two days away.
All of Cordoba, it's certain,
will come.

“What will I say if I see her?”
(I mean Bea, not the Queen.)

He fetches Hafiz. Offers it first,
as if after two weeks of study
I'll be able to read it.

I don't know whether to thank him or scream.
“You translate,” I tell him, as grand as I can.
“The book's yours, after all.”

Amir opens Hafiz
to a random page.
It takes him no more than a minute
to magic his language to mine.

Look not upon the dimple of her chin—
Danger lurks there!

“It doesn't say that! You're having me on.”

Amir says nothing. Doesn't smile, doesn't frown.
He's harder to read than the words on that page.

Joust of Champions

Clang of armor,
clash of swords,
the rock-hard crush
of lance against
chest.

The old Ramon
lived for this stuff.

But the contest is not
what I'm here for.
I don't dare tear my eyes from the crowd.

The day is waning.
The prizes (one is a horse
clothed, head to tail, in gold-threaded
silk) have been given out.

Oh, how will I sleep?
I was so sure I'd see her.
Then, just as we're leaving,
a faint laugh behind me, cool water
on pebbles. I turn—
too late. No one is there.

Amir rolls his eyes
and points to my satchel.
Unfastened, as always.
A small sheet of paper,
as fine as I've seen,
lies planted in there like a seed.

There is no code.
This girl is direct.

She names the day, and the place.
Isn't the man
supposed to do that?

I don't care.
I could joust with the
champions now.

By this time next week,
we'll have met!

Señor Ortiz

Our landlord is back once again.

We hear his footstomps,
and the slide of his servant's
long cloak on the floor.

The two of them stay
locked up in those rooms
at the top of our house.
The best, brightest ones.

But they might as well be
down here beside us.
The air when they're home
becomes something else.
Something not ours.

Dinner Guest (2)

Amir comes in from the well
after washing his hands
and joins us at the table.
Señor Ortiz looks up and sees him.
He whistles air in through his teeth.
The sound is so ugly.
Like toenails on tile.

Papa declaims on the way it once was.

How the Muslims
ruled here for lifetimes.
Seven lifetimes, in fact.
Hundreds of years!

How their streets ran with fountains.
How they planted trees bearing fruits
no Christian had heard of till then.
How the libraries here in our very city
held many more books than the sky contains stars.
“Forty
thousand
, señor—Can you fathom that?

“Then we Christians, returning,
tore their babes from their arms and even
their bellies. It's still done today.
Amir here was snatched from his birthplace
and sold at a bargain to Don Barico
as if he were naught but maggoty bread.”

Señor Ortiz throws down his spoon
with a crash. “Do not, Isidore,
preach history to me.
You cherish the old days,
and the old days are dead.

“We are at war, and you feed a snake
in
our
very own nest.”

Words

The
Plants
man has decided
he needs twenty more copies
to take on his journey
to Aragon.

Why would the Aragonese
want to read about
every last leaf in Castile?
No one asks.
Each copy we make
is like one more meal.

But even Papa
is grumbling now.

“Papa,” I ask him,
“why not write your own books?”

(He loves words, does he not?
He's always saying Thing A is like B
and Thing B is like C.
Why don't we copy
his
words
in the shop?)

Papa smiles at the ground
like a joke's inscribed there.
But after a moment
he's solemn again.

“Far better to copy well, and true,
than invent badly,” he says.

How many times have I heard that by now?

I still think he should try it.
And I see that it warms him to think that
I
think
that he could.

Shake

We have copied for so many hours on end
my hand's no longer a hand, it's a claw!

Even my initials look like they're done
by a child not yet ten.

It's not just the hours.
My hand won't stay steady.

I think of what Papa said of strong drink—
and girls.

I still water my wine, so I don't think it's that.
As for girls—

Well, it's true—I meet Bea tonight!

Clean

Mama frowns at my tunic.
What? It's my cleanest one.

“Turn around.”

Ah—there's a spot after all.
(Dirt blares much brighter
in the presence of mothers.)

I can't see what she's doing,
but a force strong and wide

licks the length of my back—
a giant's rough tongue.

I turn around, startled.
Do I look like a floor?

“Close your eyes,” she commands.
“There'll be dust.” The broom scrapes

my front. My tunic is lined
with faint tracks of black.

“There. Now you're safe.”
But she barks it.

“No one can say
that your clothing is clean

for the wrong blessed day.”
Spins away.

The broom clatters down
like the jeering applause

at the
auto-da-fé.

Near Perfect

Here we sit: me with Bea.
Bea—I can hardly believe it—with me.

Her hand rests on mine. Just lightly, as though
it's not really there.
But it's there!

Only the scent of the orange tree above us
proves I'm not dreaming.

Everything's perfect. Then—
greech!
My stomach's near empty, as always.
(Would that the
Plants
man had paid in advance!)
In a sweet, silent moment, it gurgles and turns.
Then lets out an utterly
hideous
yell.

I try to ignore it. Not to mention the rich,
stirring scent of the tree.
(The fruit all belongs to the Crown.
I don't fancy losing this hand
to a lurking sheriff—just when I've got
Bea to hold it.)

Greech!
Yet again.
All I can do is sit still and pray
that, among all Bea's perfections,
impeccable hearing's not one.

Jewels

Now that spring's here,
we get what we've longed for
all winter.

It's snowing!

People stand in the streets with their tongues
stuck far out and their noses turned up to the sky.

Jewels of pure cold land soft in our mouths.
They melt into memories
even before we can pin down their taste.

Our faces are wet from the flakes.

But before long I see—
Amir's is not drying.

Zero

“Amir, why not ask this Hafiz
where your parents are now?”

Amir shakes his head.

“And why not?” I insist.
“Come, let's try.”

A face full of fire.

“You're so good with numbers,”
he says. “Don't you know about zero?
Take a cart full of zeros,
pile them into a mountain—
what do you have?
Still zero.

“Hafiz can shed light
on what's already there.
That is all.

“Now,
Master
Ramon,” he says
with an angry toss of his head,
“please—leave me alone.”

Raro

“
Es raro,
” she says.
Strange.
I quickly learn how much Bea
adores that small word.

Everything's
raro
. The clouds in the sky,
shaped like roosters today. They're
raro
.
The girl over there, can't you tell that's a wig?
Doesn't she know those are sewn
out of dead people's hair? She's
rara
indeed
.

Nearly all that we see
is judged in this way.
I don't quiz her on how this could be.
If everything's strange, then strange
must be normal. Correct?

One day by the river
a leper walks by.
We split from our kiss
at the jing of the bell at his neck.
We say it together.
Raro!
And laugh, though
nothing's that funny.

I wonder, then on.

Does Bea know, guess, or fear
that I'm an al-Burak?
And if so, is
raro
the worst word
she'd use for me?

Fernando's Army

King Fernando departs with an army so vast
it seems to contain every man in the world.
It's hard to believe enough still remain
to make up this crowd.

Those like me—too poor to own horses
or swords—are left behind.
We cheer and clap.
Women throw garlands, wave handkerchiefs
that are dusted with scent. The air's thick
with perfume and the first heat of spring.

It's not fair.
“
I
should be going,” I say.
Amir jabs me a look.
“Not, of course, to kill Moors.
Just to get out of this bloodthirsty place.”

Amir shakes his head.
“And wars don't drink blood?”
But he doesn't sound angry.

He follows the soldiers
with faraway eyes.

A Cow, at Breakfast

No more hot chocolate at breakfast
for Mama and me. Try, instead,
a loaf left from Tuesday,
soaked in brackish warm water.
At least this way it's more
like a clump of wet sand
than tooth-splitting rock.

On the bright side, we'll soon, at long last,
see the spoils of those
Plants of Castile
.
On the dark, we don't have a clue
what we'll do next.

The mountain of paper brought back
from Toledo is now little more
than a bump.