The Apprentice's Masterpiece Read Online Free Page B

to ask
I know I should not.
    Why’s he a slave? Did he steal something?
Kill?
Has he ever been sold
in a market himself?
    How many times
has his back felt a whip?
Does a person—kind of like cramps
in your hands when you write—
get used to it?
    Do slaves dread tomorrows?
Plan escape? Dream of death?
    I make it a game. Imagine I’ll ask him
whatever I want (though I won’t).
    By the time we are home
I’ve chosen two.
    What do you hope for?
That’s one. And the second:
what do you fear?
    If I were a slave,
I think I’d fear nothing.
Sure, I would dread
every lash of the whip.
    But dread and fear
are not the same thing.
    What’s there to fear
when you have nothing left?

Pupil
    After supper, the roles
are reversed.
I help Mama clean up,
like a servant.
    I guess washing dishes is easy enough—
even for blockheads like me.
    Papa and Amir sit out
by the fire.
(Yes, for him , it is lit!)
    They scribble away
on two separate slates.
(Amir’s got an old one
of mine. No, no one’s asked
if I’d mind.)
    What do they write?
What else but Arabic?
    You see, our Moorish slave
is teaching Papa—master scribe—
how to write!
    Mama must see me scowling.
“Try to be gracious,” she scolds.
“He may be a slave,
but Señor Barico brought him here
for a reason. He was meant
as a gift to Papa.
A great one.”
    I nod, say good night.
(Is that gracious enough?)
But I think: Mama has lost
all her fine talent
for comforting me!

Pity
    Can it get any worse?
Now I’m pitied
by our slave!
    â€œMy language is so difficult.”
He wears a kind smile.
“Many great men do not know it.”
    I see. He thinks I think less
of Papa for this.
But that’s not the problem.
    No one’s thought to teach me Arabic.
So I think less of myself.
Can you blame me?
    The Kingdom barely knows I exist.
And now I’m old rags
here in my own house.

Ache
    And why Arabic?
What makes it
such a great gift?
    Hebrew—though it might
get us arrested—
that I could see
Papa wanting to learn.
Hebrew is tied to us,
to who we are.
    Is Papa so quick
to forget this?
    Listen to them!
They’re at it again.
Studying, reading.
Talking language stew.
Mama waits up, dozing
by the fire.
    I retire, but I hear them.
Their sound makes a lump
down deep in my belly.
It feels like I’ve wolfed a whole bushel
of berries, rotten and soft.

Mark of the Slave
    When Amir and Papa finish at last
with their work for the night,
Amir comes to sleep in my room.
    Aren’t slaves meant to sleep
on the staircase or something?
    It’s not that he snores.
In fact, he’s too quiet.
    And that thing on his face
gives me nightmares.
    Night after night,
he lies the same way.
On his left side.
Cheek against sky.
    So unless the night’s shade
is blacker than pitch,
I can see that S.
It shines up from his face
like some dark star.
    What manner of man
burned that mark?
A Christian? A Jew?
A slave-trading Moor?
    Does it matter?
    Most nights, the S is the last
thing I see before my eyes close.
And the first thing I see upon waking—
    whether or not
I’ve opened my eyes.

Al-Burak
    Amir and I walk to the well
at the end of our street.
A voice from the grate
of a high dark window.
    â€œHey!”
    I look up. The sun blinds my eyes.
    â€œFly away, al-Burak!”
    Should I defend him?
Is a master dishonored
by taunts to a slave?
    A rock falls near my foot.
And a second.
Amir’s far ahead.
    The rocks, and the name, are for me.
    It rankles.
We conversos are as used to rude names
as an ass is to slaps.
Marrano. Turncoat.
Jewish wolf in sheep’s skin.
    Al-Burak —that’s—a new one.
I can’t help it.
I like to know what I’m called.
    It sounds Arabic. I’ll ask Amir.
No, I won’t.
    A man in the market
called him damned shit-skinned cur.
    He’d laugh to know I was irked
by this one little slur.

Proud
    We don’t speak a word
on the way home.
    I try to