The Ghost of Hannah Mendes by Naomi Ragen Read Free Book Online Page A

all her nagging cries stilled. But I could not abide seeing her abused.”
    She ran to the demon and threw all her weight against him, making up in swiftness for what she lacked in bulk, knocking her demon-father over. Just at that moment, she screamed at him the words her own dead mother had taught her to say at bedtime to keep the night demons away: “Behold, the guardian of Israel neither sleeps nor slumbers! The angel who redeemed me from all evil, bless the children so that my name and the names of my fathers, Abraham and Yitzchak be carried on….” My mother said that her demon-chasing prayer was suddenly interrupted by her father’s laughter and her sister’s cries. She looked, startled, into the demon’s face and suddenly saw it was again her father’s, whom she loved. As she held his hand and he stroked her hair, he explained how he had put Malca to sleep with mandragora and opium in order to smuggle her across the border because he had not had enough gold to pay her head price. He apologized for frightening her with tales of devils. He hadn’t known how else to keep her from accusing him of witchcraft in front of the Portuguese soldiers, who might have put him in a basket and carried him to prison—the fate of witches .
    There were no such things as demons, he told her. The only thing one had to fear in this world were human beings who had chosen evil over good .
    My mother, Esther, always repeated these words to me with pride, but I knew she herself did not believe them. She was convinced her powerful incantation had undone the devil’s work and restored her father and sister to her .
    I bless my mother in her grave for having passed such power of belief down to me. For even as a small child, I, too, felt in possession of a wondrous secret that would allow me to outwit the myriad hosts of evil spirits that roam the world threatening me and my family. For as far back as I can remember, I shared my mother’s unshakable conviction that I, too, had the cunning and strength to save myself and those I loved. I must admit, it is a feeling that has sustained me through most of my troubled life, deserting me only on two significant occasions that I shall describe in greater detail at a later time .
    But the fool is half a prophet, she liked to say. And her terrifying entrance into Portugal was a portent of things to come .
    Once across the border, it took my mother several more days to reach Lisbon. If the inn she stayed in was horrible—filthy and overcrowded—then the streets were unbearable. My mother did not mince her words in delicacy and false modesty. The slop of chamber pots dumped, making dry roads into rivers of stink; people emptying their guts from all ends where they stood; the smell of dead animals and the rotting meat—all this a thousand times over as the city swelled until there were more people than stars for counting. And as if that wasn’t enough, conditions worsened daily as thousands more arrived in the city .
    The Portuguese king had allowed those who couldn’t afford his fees to pay less on condition that they hire boats and leave for North Africa and Saloniki. And so whole families took up residence in the streets and hillsides, homeless and nearly penniless, for they had been robbed of all their worldly goods by the decrees of the Spanish monarch, and relieved of even the small remainder by paying the head price .
    Years later, I understood that some who had paid for passage to the Levant never saw a boat; while others were put afloat in unseaworthy vessels without food or water, the captains refusing to let them disembark. Thousands died at sea from disease and hunger. And of those who reached shore, many were despoiled and murdered, robbers slitting open the stomachs of young women to search for swallowed rings. And those who survived lived to see their wives and daughters unbearably outraged in public orgies. One mother, having seen two daughters murdered thus, dug herself a grave