Red Star, Crescent Moon: A Muslim-Jewish Love Story. Robert A. Rosenstone
My face may be slack and my eyes glazed but that wouldn’t let you see how full of thanks is my heart to all the gods in whom I don’t believe. Sixteen hours from LAX to Heathrow to Barajas, and the stuffed head and slight cough which follow any long flight do nothing to lower my spirits during these first hours back in my favorite country, where the Megastar known as TJ—”The Most Beautiful Man in Hollywood!”— is directing his first film, the script based upon my book, written two decades earlier in another life. I had a hand in the screenplay and have been officially hired to serve as historical consultant on the shoot.
Shadows ease across cobblestones. A hush falls over the great square. Or is that only a trick of memory, the product of an imagination attempting to make the entrance of our heroine seem more dramatic? I can say the following without fear of contradiction. The day tourists are drifting away, the night trippers have yet to come, and the indigenous hustlers who swarm the southeast corner day and night, peddling flags, maps, postcards, key chains; the bongo players who keep getting into arguments with the guitarists of long sideburns who fake flamenco riffs; the artists who draw charcoal portraits that make everyone look vaguely like a descendant of the Hapsburgs, with large and prominent jaws; the drug dealers who lurk in the surrounding arcades, wearing jeans with American advertising slogans stenciled on them, ready to sell you buds from the finest hemp plantations of the Rif Mountains – all those who normally make the plaza bustle are taking a break. Groups of them cluster in the far corners, passing around bottles of wine to prepare for the evening onslaught of tourists, teenagers, drunks, and druggies.
Like a character in a science fiction film, she materializes as if out of nowhere, beamed down from some sleek space craft hovering far above the planet. Or perhaps she slips through one of those worm holes in space, enters our world as the representative of a civilization centered in some far off galaxy in another dimension which we humans are incapable of perceiving. I don’t see her approach the bench, do not become aware of her until she eases onto it a few feet to my left, just beyond two young mothers who hold squirming babies in their arms. Next to her an elderly man, black beret on his head and blacker cigarette in his right hand, sits erect in a military posture. The left sleeve of his jacket is neatly pinned to his shoulder.
Her face doesn’t belong here.
That’s my first thought.
It belongs in a tale told by Scheherazade.
That’s my second.
I know what you’re thinking. These sound like lines written later, agonized over for months or perhaps jotted down just now. But they’re not. I can show them to you in a file created that very evening, May 15, 1996, composed on my Toshiba laptop in room 736 of the Palace Hotel.
Putting his cigarette on the edge of the bench, the smoker touches his beret with his one hand in a gesture left over from an age more gallant than ours.
Sorry, I don’t speak Spanish.
I think that’s what I hear. Her voice is so soft I can barely make out the words but the intonations are those of English.
The two mothers wrestle their kids into strollers and push off while I feverishly search my jet lagged brain for an opener less worn than Haven’t we? What’s a? Can you? Nothing occurs before a young man arrives to help me out. Even in the fading light you can see the signs of addiction—the bad skin, shifty eyes, erratic stride, shirt sleeves buttoned to the wrist when other youngsters stroll about in tee shirts and tank tops. He stops in front of her and begins a story that, as my father would have said, is as old as the hills. Maybe older. She has such a kind face. Someone has stolen the backpack with his wallet. He’s from Holland. A college graduate. Trying to get in touch with his parents to bail him out, but they’re on vacation in Italy and he hasn’t yet been able to reach them. If she could lend him some pesetas he’ll pay them back as soon as the money arrives. Tomorrow. The next day at the latest. He takes an oath. He puts his hand on his heart.
Excuse me, I find myself saying. That’s the oldest con in the world.
She glances my way. Dark eyes make me aware of the movement of my heart. She opens her purse.
If his story is true I’m the king of Spain.
She hands over a couple of bills. He looks at me, smiles, thanks her with a deep bow and a sweep of the right hand as if he were a musketeer holding an enormous, feathered hat, then walks towards an archway that leads out of the plaza without looking back. We stare after him while the one armed man stubs out his cigarette, stands up, again touches his beret, says Buenas tardes, and strolls into the gathering darkness.
When I first came here decades ago, I say, You used to see lots of men like that, men without limbs or hands. Inutiles de guerra. The Spanish term is tricky to translate. Useless because of war. That’s pretty close. They were shot up during the great civil war here back in the thirties. Not too many around these days.
War is horrible, she says.
The huge paintings of nudes that sprawl across the facade of the Casa de Panaderia are becoming difficult to see in the fading light. Bulbs strung on wires around the outdoor cafes edging the square come on slowly, and the iron lamp above the bench sputters into a glow. A phalanx of Asian women holding colorful parasols aloft stride towards the nearby bronze statue of a man on horseback and arrange themselves in ranks for photos in front of its high pedestal.
Are you interested in knowing about that guy on the horse? I ask.
A pause that probably seems longer than it is and she says: Some king or other, I suppose.
Right you are! Felipe Tres. Phillip the Third. Not a very important king as kings go, and as Groucho or my father might have said, he probably should have gone. Eventually he did, but not before getting this plaza built. It was planned during the reign of his father, but planning and building are two different things, especially considering the state of the Spanish economy in the seventeenth century or almost any other. You can see here the beginning of planning, the notion a city can be thought into being. People came from everywhere to marvel at its spaciousness and beauty. From France, Germany, from far away as Russia. On the ground level were shops, bakers, butchers, chandlers, merchants of all sorts, but the apartments on the upper floors went to the nobles and the very rich, to relatives and friends of the king as a refuge from the boredom of their country estates. This became the center of the city. The place to see and be seen. Where you went for the great public spectacles—bullfights, horse races, executions—you name it, they had it in the Plaza Mayor. Along with a special kind of entertainment invented in Spain: the auto da fe. Act of Faith. During the Inquisition these huge public spectacles were held right here. Hundreds of heretics dragged into the square and flogged in front of cheering crowds, then hauled off and hanged for the sins of worshiping the wrong God, or the right God with the wrong name. There’s a painting in the Prado which shows an auto da fe in full swing. Just about where we sit, you can see people being whipped. You’ll recognize the buildings. They haven’t changed much. It’s on the ground floor of the museum, near the north stairwell.
Are you an artist? she asks in a neutral voice that may be due to natural caution but seems to partake of wariness I have seen in the eyes of others following one of my impromptu historical lectures.
No, I’m a writer. I used to be a professor of history, but now I’m a writer. Benjamin is my name. Benjamin Redstone at your service.
Out of what old costume drama did that phrase escape? But something about this woman seems to demand such language. She holds out her right hand. Slender, elegant fingers (and if they weren’t do you’d think I’d admit it here?), well shaped nails colored a soft pink. I dare not hold them for more than an instant.
Alison, she says.
That name doesn’t go with your face.
Her eyes make me regret the words that blurt from my lips. For a long moment we watch the Asian women shift places and take yet more photos, then form into ranks, and march towards the south archway and out of the plaza.
I suppose you’re right, she says at last, her voice almost confidential. My name isn’t really Alison. But so many people mispronounce my god