This took place in very ancient times — Franco was still alive and reigned over Spain. More precisely, he reigned de facto, for de jure there was a king — whose qualities the whole world had then underestimated, mistaking him for a puppet in the hands of the old man who obstinately persisted. So much so that Berthe and I long hesitated to yield to the desire to go play the tourists in this country where our presence could only reinforce the detestable dictatorship… But the temptation was strong and constant, and the appeal of this ancient land of the Jews powerful.
Toward the end of the sixties we cracked and cheated, deciding that Majorca was not quite Spain and that, while there was still no question of setting foot on continental soil, the islands permitted a parenthesis. It was ideologically indefensible, I admit, but we took tickets for Majorca all the same. Our leftist bad conscience did torment us a little, but the island was beautiful. In the little post office, when Berthe asked for stamps for our postcards, she was handed Franco in the appropriate quantity. She asked in French: “You wouldn’t have something else?” And the clerk, with a little smile, exchanged the dictator for flowers of the same face value. The times were already in the process of changing.
In that period, the density of the summer crowd was still acceptable on the island, although already in that godforsaken hole that was Porto Colom the only bistro displayed alternately at its door the evening’s attraction: “heute Tanz” or else “heute Flamenco.” But the (German) tourists were confined to the periphery of Majorca, respecting the slogan “vamos a la playa.” In the interior they were still in the majority among Majorcans. And so, to prove that our ambitions were not limited to tanning, we often took the car to explore this interior, its almond trees, its windmills, and its donkeys.
One very hot afternoon (but the siesta hour had nevertheless passed), we stopped in a small, silent, sunlit town — Inca perhaps, I no longer remember very well. No restaurant, no bistro, but a small discreet bodega. A real bodega, with steps descending toward a common room in the basement, cool and empty. We sat down to drink and to enjoy for a moment this calm coolness. There was no one there but us and the proprietor, a man of about sixty, unshaven and graying, who spoke French perfectly: later he told us he had lived and worked a long time in Marseille before returning to his native town. Berthe, who looks at everything and notably at men, had noticed his beautiful blue eyes.
While sipping her lemonade in small mouthfuls, my wife notices on the back wall a birdcage of woven straw. An empty cage and nonetheless remarkable for the Jews we are: it had the shape of a six-pointed star. Surprised, intrigued, Berthe collars the patron as he passes to ask him what this object is.
— “That? It’s nothing. It’s a canary cage. But it’s dead.”
— “Yes, but it has a strange shape”…
— “Strange? No, it’s normal, there are ones of every shape”…
— “I’m asking you this question because I wear a similar star around my neck”…
And Berthe shows her tiny maguen David. The patron shrugs his shoulders and disappears without a word into his kitchen. Nothing happens. And then he comes back to ask:
“And why do you wear that, you? What is it?”
“It’s a Jewish star. I wear it because I am Jewish, we are Jews, my husband and I.”
The patron goes off without a word. A very long moment passes again, and then here he is coming back:
“You are Jews… Well, I must tell you: I too was a Jew — I was a Jew five hundred years ago. Yes, five centuries ago I was a Jew, like everyone in the village. I don’t forget it, I can’t forget it. And you know, when there was that Six-Day War, I felt my Jewish blood flowing in my veins… Fortunately, it didn’t last long.”
We listened to this man who thus leaped over the centuries, who identified himself with his distant ancestors, in whom five centuries of Marranism and Inquisition had not effaced the feeling of Jewish belonging, carefully concealed and nonetheless alive. This man went to church, performed the daily gestures of the Christian faith, and yet knew himself Jewish, in a living and strong way. He was perhaps no longer of our religion, he remained of our people.
We chatted again at length in the silence of this empty and complicit bodega. And to finish, he told us, with a sober sadness:
“But now, it’s over. My two daughters have married Christians”…
In other words, for five hundred years this family had managed to preserve, in militant Catholic Spain, a limpieza de sangre in reverse, an unaltered Jewish lineage even if secret. It took the upheavals of the twentieth century and perhaps this economic emigration to Marseille for the chain of faithfulness to be broken.
We did not return to see our host. What good would it have done? We had told each other everything. In a few minutes of familiar conversation, he had summed up for us the long and difficult history of the Majorcan Marranos.
If you pass through Palma de Mallorca, you may notice that the rose window crowning the choir of its Gothic cathedral bears an immense six-pointed star. But if you inquire, you will be told that it has nothing to do with the Jews, nor with the Marranos. That may be true. As it is true that the Marranos were particularly numerous in Majorca.