by Tuvia Fogel
Then the southerly breeze freshened, pushing them toward the shore. Ten minutes later, a mere contretemps suddenly turned, as so often happens at sea, into a budding emergency. The tareta, bow to the wind, drifted quite fast, heeling over to starboard with its mainsail full of wind squashed against the mast, the rocky shore of Rhodes less than a league away. The danger was real, but the sea was still calm, which conferred a strangely ridiculous air to the scene.
“It’s like being on a ship of comedians!” murmured Yehezkel.
Spiridione ordered the crew to man the six oars, a decision that confirmed his sound seamanship to Yehezkel, and then walked to the foot of the mast to see what was going on. Within minutes, Spiridione and Yehezkel realized that if the breeze freshened any more, the mainsail would catch enough wind to prevent the rowers from making any headway. Soon they would only have two options to stop drifting toward the rocks: send someone to the top of the mast to cut the tangled halyard, or take a knife to the mainsail to let the wind blow through it. The first solution, much preferable to ruining an expensive sail, unfortunately meant risking someone’s life swinging thirty feet above deck in the bosun’s chair with the boat’s motions amplified by the closeness of the steep shore as the waves bouncing off it crossed the oncoming ones.
The bosun heading the crew was a stocky man with no trace of humanity in his eyes, a second cousin of Spiridione’s incongruously named Theophilos. He reached the same conclusions and turned to his cousin with a pompous little speech, his broken Greek reeking of resinous wine, in which he offered to be hoisted in the bosun’s chair in exchange for half the value of the salvaged sail.
As he listened to the proposition, Spiro swelled like a huge toad, his face as congested by rage as it was by laughter. Spitting copiously he screamed:
“You son of a lame and scabby dog! If your grandmother and my grandmother hadn’t been sisters, I swear on every oracle in the islands I would send you to the top of the mast right now, but you’d be in no danger of falling, because I would hoist you by your neck!”
The whole eight-man crew, except Zaharias, gathered around the two, now facing each other, fists clenched, at the foot of the mast. Fear of the coming brawl froze the pilgrims in the shadow of the prow. André made a move to intervene, but Yehezkel grabbed his arm and whispered in his ear, and the Templar sat down again. All the while, the falsetto of Zaharias’s voice singing hymns through the drama continued to lend the whole affair the air of a farce. The cliff was now frighteningly close. Yehezkel thought:
“If every time the nun and I leave the safety of land for the high seas we end up, within days, staring at an oncoming wall of rock, a kabbalist should draw at least two conclusions: in primis that our mission is strongly contrasted by certain powers in heaven, and in secundis that maybe we should stop provoking those powers, get off the damned tareta in Anatolia, and make our way to Syria overland!”
He started breathing the folded breath as he surveyed the situation once more. A thought floated up from the past, the voice of his teacher in Fustat arguing that going to sea was not Jewish. In what he would later recognize as a moment of superstitious fear, he asked himself, “Is being at sea so often disrespectful of Rav Moshe’s memory? But Rav Eleazar sent me to Eretz Israel, how am I supposed to get there if not by sea? In any case, I can no longer just look on.”
He started to untie the chest and said to the company, “Just in case these Greeks are crazy enough to not save their boat, we should all wait until we are no more than a hundred feet from shore before jumping in the water!”
Gudrun moaned loudly, and Garietto, ignoring the abbess, gripped her hand.
Yehezkel had a feeling that the foul-mouthed dispute was nothing more than a negotiation in the style of the Greeks, and that the two men would never let the tareta go aground in such an inane manner.
Meanwhile Spiridione found his breath again. “You, of all people, Theophilos, dare to blackmail me?” A shiver of pure rage shook him from head to toe, and he drew a big knife from his belt. The crew took a step back.
“I’ll slit my only mainsail myself, just so I can watch you live out your days as the penniless deckhand you are and must remain! As for you, Zaharias, shut your mouth now, or I’ll cut your tongue out!”
There was silence on deck.
Theophilos lowered his demand to a third of the sail’s value. Spiridione agreed. “Done. Why are you standing here, get a move on, by the blood of Christ! Can’t you see the rocks?”
Yehezkel leaned toward Galatea and quoted the Book of Proverbs, smiling, “People’s own folly leads to their ruin, yet their heart rages against the Lord.”
In a few frantic moments the bosun’s chair was tied to the second halyard and Theophilos, standing on a plank, began to rise as two crewmates hoisted him up.
Without telling Spiro, whose nose was in the air like everyone else’s, Yehezkel ran to the tareta’s single, central tiller, to minimize her movements while a man was aloft.
Under the admiring eyes of the helmsman he replaced, the rabbi contrasted the tareta’s swings with sudden sharp but small tugs on the tiller, administered when the hull was on the crest of a wave. The tareta became so steady that Spiridione instinctively turned around to see what stopped the rolling. When he saw the tiller in the hands of the Jew, he laughed out loud, “Your blasted breed never stops amazing me, Jew!”
Ten minutes later the mainsail lay on deck, rolled up around its yard, and the tareta was distancing itself from the island with regular, if impatient, oar strokes.
The day of the mainsail incident ended with a sunset like a hymn to the Lord executed with colors instead of voices. The company was gathered under the prow, wedged amid coiled mooring lines and freshwater jugs. It was only a week before the shortest night of the year, and even the chilly dampness and the indefinable anxiety that accompany the approach of darkness at sea could not be felt. The tareta’s prow cleaved the tranquil waters before the coast of Lycia with a soft and reassuring swoosh.
A school of dolphins gathered in front of the bow to observe the last light with them. Galatea, who had never seen dolphins before, was touched by their joyful, childlike nature. At one point the abbess even tried to feed the seagulls, but Yehezkel, like all sailors, was shocked. “Please don’t do that, madame. They’re ill-mannered birds, with drunkards’ eyes. Don’t encourage their strident attentions.”
When the last sliver of sun vanished in the sea, the pilgrims, as they had done in Kaliviani, declared the world an excellent place. Aillil asked to go amidships to speak with André. Yehezkel and Galatea both gave consent, each one convinced of being the tutor the boy addressed. The misunderstanding made them smile. Yehezkel asked, “Have you noticed how our traveling together is giving less and less scandal as we move east?”
Galatea looked at him obliquely. “And you can’t wait to be among Saracens, I bet, where you’ll be able to pass me off as your infidel slave. Isn’t that so, Master Ezekiel?”
The abbess was jesting, but Gudrun was startled. By now the young nun was truly scandalized by her abbess’s intimacy with the Jew but refrained from mentioning it because of her own weakness for Garietto. Since they’d left Candia, noticing Galatea’s reddened cheeks and undivided attention as the rabbi related dangers he’d survived, Gudrun started praying assiduously for Mother Galatea’s soul.
The silence was peaceful and penetrating, so vast it reached to the stars sparkling in a deep blue but still luminous sky. Galatea had slept à la belle étoile countless times in Tuscia but now realized the night was different here. The stars were more vivid, both in color and brightness, their light spreading into the black velvet in such a way that the eye could almost make out the space around them. The abbess and the rabbi were like two children, aghast at the beauty of the starry sky at sea. Yehezkel murmured, “People who never spent a clear night at sea may know their names and positions, but they cannot claim to know the stars. They are ignorant of the ecstasy they inspire in the human soul
.”
They stared up in wonder for a while longer, and then Yehezkel whispered, “In my mind, madame, infinite stars are a reminder of creation, and creation is a reminder of the Hebrew alphabet . . .”
“Oh yes, Rabbi, this is a propitious time to learn some more aleph-bet!”
“All right, then. Do you still remember the letter lamed and its numerical value?”
“Of course I do. Lamed is the twelfth letter, and its value is thirty,” Galatea answered promptly.
“And zadik, my favorite pupil?”
“Zadik is the eighteenth letter, and its value is ninety,” answered Galatea with a smile, “but if there are no other pupils, Master Ezekiel, how can I be your favorite?” Yehezkel sighed. “I never taught a woman before, and alas, it’s a novelty I’m discovering I favor.” He lifted his eyes. “May the Lord take pity on my body, which is weak, and on my soul, which is his anyway. Amen!”
Galatea’s laughter echoed on the water. She felt perfectly at ease and plunged right back into the game. “In Kaliviani you told me of precious jewels enclosed in Scripture as in a casket and said the aleph-bet is the key to open it and bask in their light.” She smoothed her habit in the semidarkness. “Now don’t tell me to be patient again, Rabbi, for if I don’t see at least one jewel before we reach the Holy Land, I will have to think those were promises made by a duplicitous Jew to take advantage of a naive nun.”
Both the German nun and the widow were doing their best to listen without drawing attention, but at this they couldn’t help laughing, a little scream from Gudrun and a muffled snort from Albacara.
Yehezkel knew that “duplicitous Jew” was said in jest, but in fact the nun was right. He’d found himself hesitating every time his lessons were on the point of leaving the safe shore of philosophy and the aleph-bet to venture into the high seas of Kabbalah, and Galatea noticed.
“You’re right, madame,” he said, avoiding her eyes. “I don’t consider you a ‘duplicitous Christian,’ but it is true that Jewish law forbids teaching gentiles the secrets of the Torah, nor, God forbid, its mysteries.”
“I hate to confess my ignorance, Master Ezekiel, but I could not explain the difference between a secret and a mystery if my life depended on it.”
Right away Yehezkel cast off on one of his monologues. “A secret is just something a certain number of people agree not to divulge. A mystery, be it hidden in the letters of a verse, in the rules of reincarnation, or in the true meaning of the resurrection of the dead, is a revelation inaccessible to uninitiated minds. Only strong, independent, and curious minds can attain the revelation of a mystery.”
Galatea had waited years for someone to give an intelligible form to the hidden content of sacraments. Not even Hildegard succeeded in showing her the road she’d followed to arrive at the comprehension of mysteries. She listened to the rabbi in perfect silence, almost without breathing.
“A mystery, protected by its secrets, defines a particular mystical school. That mystery then becomes the heart of all contemplations and initiation rites of that school.”
“Please, Rabbi, be kind enough to give me an example of each,” asked Galatea.
Yehezkel went to the chest and fetched a candle and a small knife. He lit the candle and stood it up and then took the knife and etched a Hebrew letter into the deck. Galatea immediately recognized a shin, the last but one of the twenty-two letters. Yehezkel crossed his legs and started the lesson. “Very well, here is an example. Kabbalah is based on the mysteries of the hidden contents of Scripture. Gematria, or the technique of adding up the numerical values of the letters in a word, is a secret shared only by kabbalists.” Then, with a smile, “At least it was until tonight . . . oh, well. Through the use of gematria, kabbalists see that when the Torah, in the second verse, says ‘and God’s spirit hovered over the waters,’ the words ‘God’s spirit’—Ruach Elohim—have a total value of 300.”
“Just like the letter shin!” exclaimed Galatea.
“Exactly,” smiled Yehezkel. “Now write the number of Divine Unity before the shin, Madame.”
Galatea took the little knife from his hand and carved out an aleph—the first letter, whose value is 1—before the shin. Yehezkel looked on, satisfied. “What you’ve written reads esh, madame, and it means fire!”
The instant he pronounced the word fire, a shooting star slowly crossed the sky above them, burning for an unusually long time. The abbess felt a shiver down her spine but clapped her hands, not in the least afraid. The rabbi wasn’t to know, she thought, that for Christians fire was a symbol of the Holy Spirit.
“The Acts of the Apostles,” she told him excitedly, “relate that on the Pentecost, fifty days after the Resurrection, ‘the Holy Spirit descended on them like tongues of fire, accompanied by a roar like wind.’”
As she pronounced the word wind, Rustico farted loudly in his sleep, and both held back laughter.
Yehezkel continued the lesson. “As I remember, you liked the way the chorus of virgins in your dream sang the word shamayim.”
Galatea softly hummed Hildegard’s music for the word as the rabbi scratched out the aleph and added, slightly after the shin, the three letters that turn it into shamayim: a mem, a yod, and another mem.
“How would you read this word, madame?”
“Sha . . . mayim, of course!” guessed his pupil.
“So the three letters after the shin read . . .”
“M . . . ayim?”
“Yes. And do you know what mayim means? It means water!” smiled Yehezkel.
Galatea, caught in a whirl of letters and meanings, looked at him, waiting for an explanation.
Yehezkel looked as if he thought the rest explained itself. “Don’t you see, madame? The second verse speaks of God’s Spirit hovering over the waters, and here is a shin, worth 300 like God’s Spirit, hovering above the word mayim, the waters!”
Yehezkel gloated like a boy showing his friend the cave he discovered in the forest. “So to those who possess the secret of gematria, the Torah reveals, through the word shamayim, that the sky’s origin is the union of fire and water! And that revelation,” he concluded smugly, “is a mystery!”
Galatea was silent for a moment and then said, “Thank you, Rabbi. You’ve shown me one of the jewels, and it truly shines like a flame. Would you show me another? Please?”
The first nightwatch was drawing to a close, and the pilgrims were asleep, but the nun and the kabbalist weren’t tired. Now and then a member of the company heard them giggling. Someone snored loudly at the foot of the mast. Galatea whispered that only Zaharias could make that much noise even while asleep.
“Write, s’ il vous plait, the letters I am going to dictate to you,” said Yehezkel with a smile that his poor Naomi had been the last to see. “Yod, yod, nun. And then samech, vav, daled.”
Galatea correctly wrote both words. Then she guessed, with no help from her teacher, that they were pronounced yayin and sod. Yehezkel glowed with pride. She asked what the words meant, but he took her down the path of gematria first. “Add up their value first, madame, if you please . . .”
“10, 10, and 50 makes 70 . . . while here 60, 6, and 4 makes . . . seventy again; what a coincidence! I didn’t doubt it, Master Ezekiel, but without knowing their meaning . . .”
“All right. Yayn is wine and sod is secret. The Talmud says that those who can hold their drink have the wisdom of seventy sages, for if seventy goes in, seventy comes out.”
She smiled. “We say in vino veritas.” She made a face. “But enough of these conversations made of ‘we’ and ‘you!’ After all, what makes me a Christian to you is what makes you a Jew to me. . . Oh, I can’t put it in words, Rabbi, but I’m sure you know what I mean!”
“I do, madame, I do . . .” murmured the rabbi.
They said nothing for a while, drinking in the stars and the song of the prow through the water.
Since Don Sancio’s death, Galatea often brought up the document the scribe considered pr
oof that there had been no Resurrection. One way or another, Yehezkel always managed not to give his opinion, saying they didn’t know enough about the claim to comment, but the thought had not left her mind since Don Sancio put it in words.
“Rabbi, I know you don’t like to talk of what is at the end of our quest, I mean beyond the Parchment of Circles. But the confession has given me no rest since poor Don Sancio mentioned it, and by now I have no doubt that this is what the hermit, ten years ago, called the enigma in Jerusalem.”
She paused, not knowing how to continue or what she really wanted to ask. “You see, it’s a verse in Saint Paul that makes Don Sancio’s words truly frightening. It’s in his letter to the Corinthians, I looked it up in the hostel in Heraklion. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. Rabbi . . . I’m afraid . . . of what we may find. What would you do in my place?”
Yehezkel reflected and then said, “Suppose I was told a witness account exists, which claims that Moses never climbed Mount Sinai, never spoke with God, and never received the Ten Commandments on two stone tablets. Would I stop being a Jew? Would those commandments suddenly become childish, short-sighted advice? No, madame. Well, it’s the same for the teachings of Jesus. If he was not resurrected, the sermon he pronounced on the Mount would still be a light to people everywhere, would it not?”