Guardian of the Dawn, page 1
PRAISE FOR RICHARD ZIMLER
Guardian of the Dawn
‘The strength of Guardian of the Dawn lies in its rich historical setting and in Richard Zimler’s creation of an idiomatic language that reflects the religious and cultural diversity of place and period . . . remarkable.’ Times Literary Supplement
‘A terrific storyteller and a wizard at conveying a long since vanished way of life.’ Francis King, Literary Review
‘While this novel is a testimonial for the thousands who suffered under the Inquisition in India, it is also a riveting murder mystery [by a] master craftsman.’ India Today
‘This is the third volume in Zimler’s luminously written series about the Zarcos, Sephardic Jews from the Iberian Peninsula. While the beginning reads like a nostalgic coming-of-age story—though in an exotic locale—a more suspenseful tone steps in halfway through. Its last sections deliver a warning on the dangerous sweetness of revenge, and how it can lead to a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions. As haunting and mysterious as India itself can be, this novel delves into the darkest currents of the human mind and heart. Few readers will emerge untouched.’ Historical Novel Society
‘Crime and punishment work their usual spell in this deeply absorbing work.’ Kirkus Reviews
‘Parallels with Shakespeare’s Othello are not accidental but nothing, to the smallest detail, is accidental with a writer who has fairly been called an American Umberto Eco.’ The Advertiser
‘An exciting adventure story . . . Scrupulously researched . . . Fascinating.’ The Independent
The Incandescent Threads
ONE OF THE SUNDAY TIMES’ BEST HISTORICAL FICTION BOOKS OF 2022
‘A memorable portrait of the search for meaning in the shadow of the Shoah.’ The Sunday Times
‘exceptional . . . This is a richly drawn, original portrayal of tenacity and sacrifice.’ Publishers Weekly (starred review)
‘succeeds with its strong emotion, memorable characters, and mosaiclike structure . . . moving and unsettling. A thoughtful and affecting novel about generational trauma.’ Kirkus Reviews
‘emotionally charged [and] moving . . . compelling and powerful . . . a contemporary classic.’ The Jewish Chronicle
‘a fine wide-ranging novel.’ Tikkun
‘a sublime novel . . . An extraordinary premise and exquisitely written.’ Buzz Magazine
‘Deep [and] moving [with] an enormous emotional charge.’ Time Out
‘beautifully written’ Jewish Book Council
‘Readers already familiar with Zimler’s exceptional gift for multigenerational storytelling will find this work among his best’ Hadassah Magazine
Hunting Midnight
‘From Midnight’s first words . . . the reader is charmed. Zimler’s ability to lay bare the horror of injustice, to find universal truths and poetry in everyday existence, and his faith in the human spirit, make reading Hunting Midnight an uplifting experience.’ Jerusalem Post
‘Zimler’s book is a triumph of modern fiction: an absolutely gripping narrative of love and loss set against a backdrop of fantastic historic drama. Zimler rises to the incredible quality of his bestselling The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon. The characters are rich and fully realized, and their conflicts are vital and real. They grow throughout the book, so that by the end you feel a real intimacy with them. I loved this book. Read it at once.’ Andrew Solomon, winner of the National Book Award (USA)
‘An ambitious historical epic from a superbly talented historical novelist, capable of combining fascinating broad-canvas glimpses of history with the most intimate portraits of the human heart in turmoil.’ Booklist (USA)
‘A page-turning story of cruelty, conspiracy and escape, plot-driven in a way that makes you read more greedily, eager to get to the end . . . Brave and intriguing . . . A delicate exploration of the ways in which repressed religion and culture shape experience, identity and loss.’ Sarah Dunant, author of The Birth of Venus
‘I defy anyone to put this book down. It’s a wonderful novel: a big, bold-hearted love story that will sweep you up and take you, uncomplaining, on a journey full of heartbreak and light.’ Nicholas Shakespeare, author of Bruce Chatwin and The Dancer Upstairs
‘Zimler is always an exhilaratingly free writer, free of ordinary taboos, and Hunting Midnight shows him at the height of his powers.’ London Magazine
‘An epic drama, spanning three continents and more than twenty-five years, building up to a genuinely moving climax.’ Literary Review
‘Reading Hunting Midnight was like discovering a rare gem. Richard Zimler is a brilliant author with a touch of genius.’ Rendevous Magazine (USA)
‘Enthralling . . . Hunting Midnight is a shamelessly sprawling historical novel, spanning continents, Napoleonic wars, a secret Jewish family, Kalahari magic and slavery.’ Sydney Morning Herald
‘Zimler’s tale of friendship and revenge [becomes]a search for the unexpected . . . Zimler is an honest, powerful writer.’ The Guardian
‘Zimler’s writing is pacey and accessible without ever patronising the reader – deeply moving’ The Observer
The Search for Sana
‘a bold investigation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict . . . By obliging readers to see the past, [Zimler] illuminates the sources of injustice today . . . He writes in calm, clear prose adorned by the occasional glistening image like a jewel in a fast-flowing stream.’ Michael Eaude, Tikkun
‘beguiling’ The Guardian
The Seventh Gate
‘A gripping, heartbreaking and beautiful thriller . . . unforgettable, poetic and original.’ Simon Sebag Montefiore
‘The Seventh Gate is not only a superb thriller but an intelligent and moving novel about the heartbreaking human condition.’ Alberto Manguel, author of The Library at Night
‘Mixing profound reflections on Jewish mysticism with scenes of elemental yet always tender sensuality, Zimler captures the Nazi era in the most human of terms, devoid of sentimentality but throbbing with life lived passionately in the midst of horror.’ Booklist (starred review)
‘Adding a touch of Jewish mysticism to his historical thriller, Zimler . . . excellently captures the gamut of tumultuous emotions in his intense and detailed portrait of a city destined for war, and his exceptionally drawn characters struggling to survive in a world gone mad make for an unforgettable story.’ Library Journal (starred review)
‘Zimler, a seasoned American writer living in Portugal, combines sexy coming-of-age adventures with coming-of-Hitler terrors in this powerfully understated saga.’ Kirkus Reviews
‘The Seventh Gate is unforgettable . . . The reader will be haunted by these brave characters and the stirring murder mystery . . . The Seventh Gate builds frustration and anxiety into a devastating and haunting conclusion . . . gripping, consuming, and shocking . . . unforgettable.’ New York Journal of Books
‘Zimler . . . surpasses himself with this coming-of-age epic set in Berlin at the start of the Nazi era . . . the whodunit is captivating enough, but the book’s power lies in its stark and unflinching portrayal of the impact of Hitler’s eugenic policies on the infirm and disabled.’ Publishers Weekly
‘Zimler [is] a present-day scholar and writer of remarkable erudition and compelling imagination, an American Umberto Eco.’ Francis King, The Spectator
‘Zimler has this spark of genius, which critics can’t explain but readers recognise, and which every novelist desires but few achieve.’ Michael Eaude, The Independent
ALSO BY THE AUTHOR
The Incandescent Threads (Sephardic Cycle #5)
The Gospel According to Lazarus
The Night Watchman
The Warsaw Anagrams
Teresa Island
The Seventh Gate (Sephardic Cycle #4)
The Search for Sana
Hunting Midnight (Sephardic Cycle #2)
The Angelic Darkness
The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon (Sephardic Cycle #1)
Unholy Ghosts
GUARDIAN OF THE DAWN
Richard Zimler was born in New York in 1956 and now resides in Porto, Portugal. His twelve novels have been translated into twenty-three languages and have appeared on bestseller lists in twelve different countries, including the United States, the UK, Australia, Brazil, Italy and Portugal. Five of his works have been nominated for the International Dublin Literary Award and he has won several other accolades for his fiction across Europe and North America. The Incandescent Threads is the latest in his Sephardic Cycle, an acclaimed group of independent works that explore the lives of different branches and generations of a Portuguese-Jewish family, the Zarcos. zimler.com / @RichardZimler
To the many thousands of men, women, and children who were imprisoned by the Inquisition in India.
PREFACE
“What do you think memory is made of?” my father asked me. From the moist tenderness in his downturned eyes and his hand quivering on my shoulder I knew that my mother was caressing his thoughts. Her funeral had been more than two years earlier, and it was a measure of his continuing grief that he put so adult a question to a boy of seven.
“I don’t know, Papa,” I replied with a shrug, too young to think it worth my while to hazard a guess. But when he withdrew his hand, fear batted its wings at my ears. “Maybe it’s made of everything I ever saw,” I rushed to add, hoping this was a good enough answer to get him to carry me out to the verandah, where we could watch Indra’s great red sun set over the rim of our world.
He considered my reply fo
My gut squeezed into a knot of worry, since I couldn’t imagine what he meant, but then he winked at me to let me know that this was only one of his riddles. Amusement radiated from his clear gray eyes and made me feel protected, as though his arms were tight around me.
“Where are the mice? Show me!” I begged, pressing into him with my urgency.
He eased open the wooden shutters, each of which gave a sharp, fugitive squeal. Rubbing at his eyes with make-believe paws, he wrinkled his nose and bent down to me, sniffing greedily at my cheek.
Giggling helplessly, I wriggled away. “You make a good mouse, Papa,” I told him.
“I’m glad I’m good for something. Now what about all that squeaking? And all the voices you’ve ever heard?” He tapped the top of my head. “They’re in there, too, aren’t they?” he questioned.
I gave him a big nod and he leaned out the window, breathing in deeply, giving thanks in his silent way for the gold-glowing rice fields and soft, pink clouds. I sometimes think Papa felt most himself when observing the world’s colors. We were always alike in that way – drawn out to the world through our eyes.
“It seems our mice have brought the wind from the east this evening,” he said contentedly. “And the wind must have asked the forest to send us its scents.” He shook his head, astonished by these simple things, and picked up Mama’s teakwood hairbrush from the desk behind him. He gripped it in his hands as though it gave him life, and I knew he was about to leave me for his room, where he could sit alone with his memories of her.
“Is something wrong, Papa?” I asked.
“No, it’s just … Ti, you know I am almost forty-one now. And even so, I can remember all the odors of Constantinople as if I were still living there.”
My name was Tiago but everyone in my family called me Ti.
Papa looked beyond me into his boyhood and rubbed the front of his bristly hair, which was already gray. “How I used to love the mounds of saffron and cloves in the Grand Bazaar,” he said dreamily. “And the scent of your grandfather’s woolen robe when it rained – all mossy and dark. And the baklava in the bakeries. It made everything smell like honey, even the light reflecting off the Golden Horn. How do you think all those different things remain inside us for years?”
“Maybe they stick to something,” I suggested.
He drew his head back in surprise. “So,” he replied, frowning angrily, “you think God coats our souls with glue? Tell me, are my questions some sort of joke to you?”
Papa glared at me and flung the brush away with an assassin’s force. It whizzed past my head and hit behind me with a thud that made my heart jump. The next day I noticed a splintered crack on the left ear of the life-sized, eight-armed statue of Shiva that guarded our doorway. I’d guess now that damaging the wooden god was Papa’s precise intention; the statue had been Mama’s most beloved part of her dowry.
The nick on Shiva’s ear would forever remind me of this quarrel, and of my mother’s enduring place in our lives, but at that moment I didn’t dare look back to see what had happened because my father’s eyes still flashed with rage. I was flooding with tears of misery, and I must have tried to run off; even now I can feel the urgent tension between us when he grabbed my wrist, as though a rope were stretched to its limit.
He kneeled beside me, his eyes sunken.
“Don’t hit me!” I pleaded.
He had never laid a hand on me, but since Mama’s death I no longer knew who he was at times.
“What have I done?” he moaned. “Forgive me, Ti.” He kissed me all over, and the tickling of his unshaven cheeks brought my faith in him back to me. When I was very young, my moods were easily changed with a diversion, and he cheered me up by simply buttoning my shirt. By the time he was done, his ink-stained fingers – moving delicately and quickly against my skin – had returned meaning to my world. “Maybe you’re right,” he said, taking my hands and swinging them between us like the cord bridge below the waterfall near Ponda when it was rocked by the wind. “God has made our soul sticky, and what stays on it is what we always remember.”
He swept me up onto his lap, and for a long time we gazed out the window together, his head over my shoulder, his breathing hot on my ear. He sniffed at my hair like a mouse again, and I squirmed happily inside his embrace.
The first stars soon began to tremble over the tops of the palms, which fanned the just-risen moon with the cool breezes of the descending dusk. I waited for the echo of my father’s words to fade completely into the swelling darkness, sensing I would dare to say something new about myself as soon as they were gone. But what? My existence pulsed around me as it never had before, was as present to me as my heartbeat, which was much deeper than normal, as though needing to be heard. I closed my eyes and saw the sun as it had been a few minutes earlier, a red crescent melting over an undulating blanket of hills along the horizon – melting over the endlessly ticking edge of another day of my life, as well. I was Tiago and I was my father’s son. Were the world and I separate or the same?
I shuddered. “I feel alone, Papa.”
He kissed me and held me tight. I ceded myself to him, along with all I would ever become. As I thought of Mama’s hairbrush lying abandoned on the floor, my breaths came heavily, but also with expectation, as if her absence were a golden weight on my chest. I hopped down to retrieve it, then climbed back up onto his lap. He began to comb my hair and said something that I knew would be bound forever to my soul: “You will never be alone, Ti, because I’ll always be with you.” He moved his hand in an arc to indicate the moonlight that was turning the palms to silver-tipped feathers. “And so will all this.”
While confined in my cell in Goa, I often thought of Papa’s promise, wondering if he had lied to me on purpose. Or had he meant that my memory of him would outlive his death and always reside inside me? If so, he should have warned me that it would not be enough to save me.
CHAPTER ONE
After my arrest in November of 1591, I spoke to no one but my prison guard for nearly eleven months. I was neither informed of the charges against me nor allowed anything to read, and my window, a grudging slit in barren stone, was too high up to allow me a glimpse of the city below. Hope clung to memories of Tejal, and sometimes, too, to the drumming of rain, which reminded me there was a world beyond the control of my jailors. Once, during a storm, I licked a few drops as they scurried down my wall. They tasted of Indra’s Millstream and, for a time, my thoughts were splashed with all my childhood freedom, but I often think they betrayed me in the end; I was robbed of God that very night, awoke to find myself more alone than I’d ever been before, banished from the world He’d always watched over. I’d never again feel my toes curl through the red earth of rice fields or learn whether Tejal had given birth to a son or daughter.
Apologizing silently to Papa for not making the better life he’d wished for me, I reached for the treasure made of rust and sharpness I’d hidden at the bottom of my earthenware chamber pot weeks before. Sniffing its holy scent of metallic purpose, counting on defeat as my last friend, I drew it across one arm and then the other. My final portrait would be warm, and designed in my own blood, as it should be.
I knew I was damned when not even my prayers could make the nail dig deeply enough in my life to create the miracle I needed. Still, I bled well, and the river that lies beyond the Sabbath carried me far in its current. Laying my head into the justice of its waters, I dreamed of a horizon of pine and cedar far in the west, on the banks of the Jordan River.
Tejal would be informed of my death; she would now be free to marry another man. That was worth this price I had to pay.
I awoke with a jolt to a sweating priest I’d never seen before knotting rough cords around my arms. I begged him to leave me be, but he continued his work and dumped me with a grunt of disgust onto my cot. I tugged at his rosaries to try to break my fall, sending the beads scurrying over the floor.
“Mulatto bastard!” he shouted at me. “We’ll get a confession from you yet!”
