In the Garden of Iden Read Online Free PDF

Mamacita or Mi Esposa. Very affectionate, I’m sure, but it sank me in deep waters. I sat there racking my brains.
    The priest smote the table with his palm. “What is your name?” he said slowly.
    “Hija?” I said at last. I had a long sonorous baptismal name, I knew I had, but I couldn’t remember what it was.
    “What is the name of your village?” tried the man in red.
    A memory floated by and desperately I grabbed at it. “It’s not Orense because Mama comes from there and she says it’s better and she wishes she could go back.”
    “But where do you live?”
    “I told you, in a little house. With a fence. And we have a goat.”
    Well, it went on like that for what seemed hours, with the dry quiet scratching of the pen taking it all down, establishing only that I was a little girl of unknown origin and apparently no Christian name. The priest seemed very excited, very happy. The man in red fumed. The Biscayan just looked fascinated by it all and kept pressing me for details, which of course I didn’t have.
    Then abruptly, in the middle of a question, he stopped and peered at me.
    “Are you going to faint?”
    “What?” I stared at him. But lights were dancing in front of my eyes.
    “The child has had no food since the time of her arrest,” he explained to the others. “It was assumed that she was the child of the woman Mendoza and her food would be paid for accordingly. However, no arrangements were made.” He looked encouragingly at the man in red. “Which could be an argument for your point of view, señor. Surely, if the child was really her daughter, she’d have paid to send the child some food?”
    “An oversight,” the priest objected. “The woman has been in continuous interrogation since she was arrested. It could easily have slipped her mind.”
    “On the other hand, if the child’s story is true, then the Holy Tribunal has the responsibility of providing her meals, assuming that she is, as she says, a pauper.” The man in red tapped his finger on the documents in front of them.
    The priest glared at him. “We have not yet established that her story is true in any respect.”
    “Worthy señors,” the Biscayan started to say, at which point I swayed forward and threw up bile all over the floor. So the man in red, acting as the Bishop’s representative, was able to authorize a loan with the Tribunal that I might buy a supper of milk and broth. The Biscayan took me off to a little side room and watched me as I dined.
    Before I drank, he took a flask of something from within his doublet and poured it into my milk. I grabbed it and gulped at it.
    “That tastes funny,” I said suspiciously.
    “What do you want, Rhenish wine?” he replied. “Drink. It’ll make you strong. And believe me, you’re going to need to be strong.”
    I shrugged. He leaned there, watching me. The intensity of his watching made me angry. There was no malice there, nor any sympathy, nor any human reaction at all that I could identify.
    “You know, they put the woman Mendoza on the rack today,” he remarked. “They’re torturing her. To make her confess she’s a secret Jew.”
    Was he trying to make me cry? I’d show him. I shrugged.
    He studied me. “Doesn’t upset you, eh?”
    “She’s a bad lady. She was going to kill me. I told you that.”
    He just nodded. “They’re going to try to make you confess to being a Jew yourself, you know.”
    “But I’m not a Jew. I told them that,” I said wearily. “If they would only take me back to my mama, she’d tell them.”
    “But they don’t know where your mama is. You can’t remember.”
    He had me there. I blinked back tears.
    “Come with me now,” he said, and held out his hand.
    We went back into the other room, he sat me in my chair, and I glared at them all.
    “Little girl, tell us the truth,” said the priest.
    “I told you the truth already,” I said.
    “If you do not tell us the truth,” he said, just as if I hadn’t spoken,