Part II - L. A. Couriel Shares Epic Story of Religious Murder... The Pawnbroker from Covhila - A Jewish Tragedy...

 

I chose this video, simply because I wanted to provide the facts of the time period covered,  but that was presented in a manner that grabbed you (at least it grabbed me!) right from the beginning--In fact, this young presenter could very well be the main character in this Epic Novel by Lior Couriel... And, yes, it has all the facts...and even more to learn...

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I look at this cover and can't help but wonder if this is an ancestor of the Author...To me, it is the perfect cover, the woman is obviously experiencing some type of emotional trauma, don't you think? Perhaps, she has ancestors who were actually part of the Inquisition...or the Holocaust...
No matter, which, I think...Murder is Still Murder!

Lisbon, 1574
Frigid mists converged as if in mutual desire. Where they met, a transparent droplet formed and thickened. A round belly of water swelled. Stretched across its delicate film were reflections, gray and cheerless. The drop ballooned like the innards of a hopeless drunk, and it tilted sideways. It crawled imperceptibly until, as if a restraining membrane had torn, it accelerated in the slide along its path atop a slanting plank of wood. The drop coursed unhindered down the plank. An unseen hand seemed to detach it from the wood’s greasy surface, and it glided through the air and shone like a black diamond. The cold liquid smashed against the left eyelid of Ginebra de Fonseca. She wiped the back of her hand across the wet eyelid, extending a dirty stripe from her eye onto her cheek. She sighed aloud, turned onto her side, and lay half dozing as she waited for her consciousness to be reclaimed by her senses.
When she found the strength to open her eyes, she saw that everything around her was unchanged. The damp and filthy cell, her forced home for the last fourteen months, continued emitting its clammy fetor no different from when she was dragged there in her ripped smock.
Ginebra was lying on a pile of spiky rags, and her flesh felt fiery despite the petrifying cold. Around her were the sounds of the cruelest prison in the kingdom of Portugal. Echoes of last night’s happenings were still a confusing swarm between her temples. Her body ached. Her wizened flesh, which once was considered the loveliest in all the reaches of the Estrela district, flooded with nausea as she remembered the night’s tortures.
A wave of miasma advanced from the corner of the cell and assaulted her. She sneezed, and a stream of red mucus burst from her nostrils. Her hand reflexively met it in a pointless gesture of wiping. Her groin was burning. She clenched her thighs and curled into a fetal position. The motion was painful. What could they still see in her at this point? What was there in her body to drive the jailers and torturers insane? They would go mad with animal rutting, grope her as they lowed with porcine lust, abuse her as if at home they had no women whose clean flesh was waiting to be kneaded in comfort.
A leech climbed out of the rumpled rags and bit her arm. Ginebra grabbed it, pulled it off her skin, and bit it vengefully, splitting it in two. She would fight back. She would fight them all. Judges, jailers, torturers, vermin. She would fight to the end. The damp leech wasn’t kosher; she spat out the half-worm, but it had dripped a thick, revolting liquid onto her tongue. If only she could similarly retaliate, she thought, against the men who had overseen her fate for hundreds of nights already. She knew it was imperative this night, too, that she summon up strength. She would have to be on her feet to secretly fill her saucer with the drops of water emerging from the wall. The drops that welled from that stony skin were her only consolation. They were also her most important discovery, accounting for her survival to that day.
With her fingers, Ginebra dug around a dark brick of the wall, and it loosened. Her fingers, with their broken nails, were aching. The fissure that she uncovered behind the brick was full of soft mold. She pressed the heel of her hand against the wall, forcing the tremor to stop. Drops of water pooled in the concavity of her furrowed palm. She felt the coolness penetrating the space between her fingers and lowered her head toward the water. A sharp pain crossed her back and made her regret the impulsive movement. She cautiously raised her hand, slightly parted her cracked lips, and lapped eagerly.
Then she positioned the saucer, the only item in her cell that could remind her of the world outside, and she waited. She was almost asleep before the bottom of the saucer was filled with a puddle big enough to drink from. Before replacing the brick, she sipped a little. Then she carefully moistened her fingers and gently massaged the skin of her face. Lastly, she dipped a finger into the mud on the floor and daubed around the brick’s edges to connect it to its fellows and arouse no suspicion. She looked up at the airhole. The night was dark, and her gaze wandered over the inky space. She understood that moonlight would only later appear through that opening high in the wall.
She had known the moon’s behavior since her childhood in Covilhã. An old neighbor, a hunched and wrinkled astronomer, had revealed the secret workings of the heavenly spheres to her. He taught her everything of value that she knew, even the cryptic paragraphs she learned by heart at his request before she comprehended them. The knowledge that she owed to him had steered the course of her life, the worse for her, to this pass.
But despite her tribulations in the hideous cell, she laid no blame on him. She cherished the memory of learning from him. Ginebra dozed off again. Dizzying visions cradled her fatigue and gradually dissipated it. More droplets fell from the ceiling, but without reawakening her. In the morning, there came a fly. The sense of fitful grazing on her arm woke her up. Ginebra shooed it away from the wound there that was refusing to heal. The insect winged upward, buzzed around her, and landed back on the same spot of split skin that it had landed on before. Once more, she flicked her hand, and the annoying buzz stopped only when the little legs stood again, slightly jittering, at the edge of the wound. She found it pleasant. Ginebra considered banishing the fly a third time but relented. How many creatures could be her friends here?
In her mind, a window opened onto distant memories. The astronomer arose among them, leaning back in a chair with his little paunch pressing against the wooden surface of the table in front of him. His face bore a broad smile. She was eleven when she first looked at the unsettling drawing that lay between them. In the center of a broad yellow parchment sat a fly the size of a bread roll, its lineaments drawn in brown ink. Each part of the fly’s body was depicted in fine detail, enclosed in what she could describe only as a kind of winged egg. From the fly’s head, long, thin coils arose at wings attached to the egg on the outside. They resembled a fly’s wings, being translucent and closely veined, but they appeared exceptionally large for the fly’s body. Behind the back of the egg, dim columns of smoke twisted away as if in a powerful wind. The egg was flying in the sky; she theorized, and burning. Beneath that bulbous object, dark shadows of cypress trees could be discerned, confidently and artfully drawn. The egg flew high.
Ginebra’s mouth opened in astonishment. The astronomer must be insane. He had lost his mind altogether. There are no such drawings in the world; if there are, they must surely be forbidden outright. She was familiar with the murals drawn in churches, but this didn’t even resemble a drawing. It was something distorted, abnormal, and even frightening. Could her neighbor be a sorcerer? This was dangerous; he was dangerous; what could she do? Notions whirled through her mind. She had to decide on a complex and intricate issue for the first time. Should she nod as if she understood, although she understood nothing? Or should she report him? But to whom? To her parents?
Because of her, would he be consigned to the colony of deranged old people outside the walls? Would he be stoned, burned, or tortured? She shuddered. The sensible course would be to get up right now and run for her life before she fell under the madness or, worse, under suspicion. She fidgeted where she sat, and her toes curled. In the struggle between being friends and fleeing yet another time from his room, the former won out.
He watched her as if he could hear her thoughts, and smiled again. “I knew you’d understand,” he said serenely, stroking his chin with one hand. He had a large head. Over the folds of his face, a thick mustache curled, like the horns of a bull, stretching out to the middle of his sunken cheeks. His nose was long, bending downward as if meant to shield his mustache and narrow lips. His eyes sparkled with cleverness, but she didn’t consider them attractive. His hair was black and seemed to retreat like foliage on a riverbank, hesitantly claiming the space above his high, flat forehead. One sharp, precise wrinkle split his forehead from side to side. She never could guess his age from his appearance. A whisper from inside herself told her that he was in his twilight years. High cheekbones gave him the aura of an ancient battler, but his cheeks’ dangling, wrinkled skin softened that arrogance to the point of disappearing.
Instead, an aged man’s abashed vulnerability emerged. Her girlish senses told her she could not betray his trust. It was up to her to mend the rapport between them. “What I don’t understand,” she said hesitantly, “is how the egg got to be above the beautiful cypress trees.” “The way birds do,” he winked. “Or more like the way flies do.” Her eyes softened, making her confusion visible. “What is the most striking difference,” he said, slightly slowing his speech as he tended to do when he wanted her to truly concentrate on his words, “between a bird and a fly?” “Their size?”
“You’re still the smartest girl inside the town walls,” he murmured tenderly, and wrinkles were scored at the corners of his eyes. “Also, weight.” “So, then what?” “The fly, despite its minuscule head and weight, can do exactly what the bird does, but it performs better. It leaps from its place like lightning from the sky, flies accurately, and returns precisely to where it was. No bird can do that. Not completely. Right?” “Yes. No. Right.” “So, it seems he possesses great intelligence despite his smallness, eh?” “Y-yes.” “And in proportion to his size, his intelligence is greater than the birds.” He nodded his head. “Yes, the fly’s intelligence is a wonder! So, I thought that if I could connect his intelligence to larger wings, his abilities would be amazing if they obeyed his intelligence. And if I set him inside a hollowed egg, which is strong, firm, and lightweight, he can accomplish marvels. He has tremendous understanding: A fly knows things with complete certainty. To him, the ways of the world appear with clarity that we can’t even imagine. He conducts himself with astounding precision — and there must be a way to extract some benefit from that.”
In her opinion, he was being unreasonable. “A fly, really? Who heard of anything like that? Wouldn’t it be heretical? I mean, mimicking the deeds of the angels? I think you’re making fun of the church murals.” 

The astronomer’s response was to burst into a strident, roaring laugh that quickly turned into a gurgling cough. She watched with concern as his body rocked from side to side. His health was so fickle. Mother was right about his days being numbered. “You funny little girl, this is science!” he exclaimed in choked exultation. He leaned forward and pounded the parchment with a forcefulness that dislodged her from her place. “Science! Exactly like the science of building the ships that cross the seven seas. Science!” She felt the need to reprove him.
“Does the church allow this kind of thinking?” “The church?” the old man echoed in surprise. “Why would you care about the church, little girl? Don’t you know who you are?”
His question seemed sincere to her. “Who I am? In what way?” He stayed silent. His face looked grave. The figure of the old man receded in her imagination. The echo of his words faded, and the shutters of memory closed with a clack...
The moldy cell re-inhabited her present, and its stench flooded her nostrils. In fellowship, Ginebra examined the fly that was resting on her arm. He stood exactly where he had positioned himself before, blissfully rubbing a pair of his legs. She deliberately slowed her breathing and tried painstakingly not to frighten him again.
With the astonishing picture of the fly, that day now seemed to her as if it had occurred in a different reality. A reality formulated far from Lisbon, the capital city that had now thrust Ginebra’s very existence into mortal danger. 

She was a young girl of 11, much like the young girl appearing in the video... and, perhaps, just a little of me, although I would never have known of an ancestry of such pain... Really? When I asked my mother, with an ancestry on both sides of my parents, that was German, all she would state quickly was that I was an American... Obviously my ancestors were part of the race that murdered Jews and anybody else who was caught in the horrible war that was just ending as I was born... But I was not to learn of that time... It was years before I started learning of our history...

The book opens in Lisbon in the year, 1574, She had been jailed by the Inquisitor, who would spend hours trying to discover exactly what she knew...and, also, to force her declaration of herself a "believer..." Or not... and, thus, put to death... I have asked and received permission from the author to share more excerpts from this poignant tragedy... Couriel is such a wonderful storyteller that he flows easily between and among the various settings, knowing, perhaps, that the horror presented needed to be softened, by not dwelling on the horrid details of the life one Jewish girl was made to endure on the basis of religion. The Religion of the Catholic Church in this case, as a ruling duo forced a state religion and then chose to spread their religious terror...

Ginebra, was intellectually advanced, so much so that, on the few times she had interacted with her  neighbor, he began to notice her speech, her curiosity, and, perhaps, an above-normal intelligence... He was a scientist... inventor... astronomer and yet very personable. Perhaps, he even saw in her somebody who could be a student--an individual with whom he could "deposit" much of his gathered intelligence? And, perhaps, he knew that, someday, "they" would come for him... And would succeed this time in stealing one of his most important inventions--the loxodrome! For, at that time, new inventions that would help traders move from country to country via water was a very important contribution for the world...

Indeed, that is exactly what happened. But, it was much longer before it did. In the meantime, Genebra became his student--but nobody knew it. The book does not explain why her neighbor suggested that they enter into a conspiracy. But, seeing her curiosity, he thought she might agree to one. Thus, she was hired to "clean his house" and, instead, little by little she began to learn how to use the stars to navigate. Alone, or with her mentor, during the night she would roam the nearby hills and valleys learning the names of each star system and then adding what she had been taught to use the sky's locations as a means of improving methods of her travel--an important skill that was to later lead to her being able to escape from the dungeon and all the emotional, mental and physical abuses she had endured for unending months... Basic mathematical skills were added and soon she was able to provide direct support to her father's business as a pawnbroker... 

And when he was scheduled to go on a business trip, which resulted in his never returning, she took over the business and successfully worked to keep it running, even though she was not out of her teens at the time... Also, as expected, the professor was soon taken, together with most of his papers and various inventions in stages of development. Readers learn that he, too, had been taken by the Inquisitor... Soon after Genebra was taken, we learn that a neighbor had hinted to church officials that she should be looked at--that she was continuing the rituals of her earlier religion. Genebra was from the Jewish background and had created a loaf of bread using the patterns used by those practicing a Jewish life. the pawnshop had been taken over and ransacked... family scattered...

The video above, for those who had not known much about the details of the Inquisition, has covered what she must have faced, yet she was able to live. Even the Inquisitor became interested in her, recognizing her strength, her presence, even in extreme distress, and, so, he started considering just how she could be "used" for his own personal benefit... After all, he was free to, more or less, do anything he really wanted with her. Why shouldn't he explore profitable possibilities...

So one day, bringing her into the room where she was normally interrogated, he told her that he would be bringing somebody to see her--somebody important, and warned her...to be careful how she acted. The man who, when he first set eyes on her, then soon,  began to question her background--wanting to know if she was worthy of him...

Based upon the response of the Inquisitor, she was brought to a partially destroyed castle where a small harem had been created for this man's private  dalliances. But... contrary to what happened with all of the other women there, Genebra was never touched, even on those nights where she was "scheduled" for his full attention...

Shall I tell you that this is a happy ever after story from there on? Truly, that would indeed be fiction, would it not? For there were two major activities controlling the world at that time. The Catholic Church had begun to act on behalf of the King and Queen of Spain, who had mandated that the Christian faith become the State Religion...using any means necessary to ensure this conversion of all residents.

But, in small ways, which were not even noticeable to Genebra, those who wished to do harm to the family, used one small traditional action that would later become her death sentence...

Except that the young man who came to look upon Genebra's beauty was the new, young king of Portugal. And the beautiful Genebra had captured the King's heart, even though he wasn't quite sure that she should become His Queen... For one thing, he was both pleased and somewhat intimidated by her obvious intelligence and scientific knowledge--even knowing mathematics was beyond most people at that time. Yet, being able to gain more than sex from a woman certainly was enticing. They were together most of the time, but never seen as acting in any sexual manner...

In the end, it was a little bit of ego of both of these young people who were simply caught in a world of madness when freedom to believe what they wanted was arbitrarily taken away. But more, it was the conniving of those peripherally knowledgeable of what was happening, that resulted in an ending that is, quite simply, beyond imagination, yet, quite specifically, the only conclusion that could have happened to this fated couple. A Jewish Tragedy...

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I consider this, especially now, a Must-Read!

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