Yiddish for Pirates

by Gary Barwin

  “My mother used to say, ‘If one wants to beat a dog, one finds a stick.’ So, nu, I’m looking for a stick.”

  Our first battle was with time.

  We waited.

  Fingers cast by candlelight wavered against the walls as Moishe examined shelves. Prayerbooks and Torahs, but also letters, leases, contracts, deeds, ketubahs, rabbinical court records, and sheaves of poems by Halevi and Moses ben Jacob ibn Ezra. Like the manifold races of man, from Ultima Thule to the lands of Prester John, the books ranged in size from those that could be held like a child’s hand to those that could contain the broad lungs of an ape.

  But no sticks.

  The candle was becoming an even shorter thumb, a warm wax petseleh, a guttering boyhood. Moishe snuffed it like a priest and we were in the dark. How long would the shtarkers stalk Doña Gracia’s? We slept for hours waiting for the waters to recede.

  Finally, Moishe felt his way to the door and hauled on it to make a scupper for my exit. I crept through, found my way past the storage room and flew in darkness down the hall. I stopped at the stairs and listened.

  A slurping, a chewing. An animal sound. Some chazzer on the table finishing the seder. The only toughs, twenty white soldiers on a red hill, roughing up the lamb. I climbed the last stair and looked out.

  Padre Luis from the Palacio Arzobispal, now emperor of wine bottles and inquisitor of stews. There’s an extra cup left for Elijah at any seder, but this ghost we could not have expected.

  “Ah, Christian. Some company here in this desolate sanctuary.” He’d seen me and remembered that I’d baptized myself a “Christian.” “Come enjoy some strange fruit,” he said, holding up the half-noshed flesh of something unidentifiable.

  He appeared to be alone in his leftover kingdom and so I returned to my Noah in the bookish Ark.

  We were chaleshing for a facefull. We’d eaten only the first few ritual seder foods before the table was stormed.

  “A chair, Miguel,” Padre Luis said, directing Moishe to a place across from him. “An oasis of food and wine for you who are hungry. And someone to break bread with.”

  Moishe sat at the chair that yesterday was Joshua’s. He drank the remaining cup of the seder wine then piled a tall Ararat on Joshua’s plate. At least two of everything.

  “Your parents were not glad to see you?” Padre Luis asked, wrestling a joint of lamb with his face, the wet slap like the sea between a dock and a hull. “I am surprised to discover you here. In the house of a Jew.”

  Moishe motioned to the food, hoping that this would be explanation enough, relying on two of the perennial certainties of story: appetite and mystery.

  Padre Luis nodded and, for awhile, the three of us pursued our appetites and allowed mystery its invisible Elijah-like place at the table. I roamed about this landscape of food, hunting the placid raisin and harvesting the gentle nut.

  “You are wise, my young friend,” Padre Luis said, after awhile, “to eat much and speak less.” He drained a silver kiddush cup of its wine. “But I know who you are.”

  Moishe’s gaze darted toward me. Should we run?

  Padre Luis looked left and right about the room, as if at any moment the red capes of the Holy Office would flame from behind the tapestries.

  “I know who you are because Doña Gracia told me.”

  Did they extract this as their hot tongs branded both her mortal flesh and her soul’s thin wings?

  “Gey strasheh di vantsen—frighten the bugs off someone else—I am called, ‘Miguel,’ and that is all,” Moishe said with bravado. But I knew he wasn’t certain if this was treachery, something to trick him into dropping his goyishe drawers and revealing the true pomp and circumcision of his Hebrew shvants.

  “Miguel. Moishe. Conveyor of forbidden books. I recall little of what I said when we previously met, but I shall repeat what I believe I imprudently revealed,” Padre Luis said. “I am no friend of the Holy Office. In these few years, I have become wasted, wraithlike, my faith consumed by its un-Christian fire. What I did not say was that I was an ally of the Jews, of Doña Gracia, of the rabbi, that I was to be part of the plan for the escape of those now condemned, that I would leave with them for a new life, holy yet free. Last night, I would have arrived in time to give warning to those in this house for I heard what they said in the Palacio. It is to my eternal regret that I had first immersed myself in a blood-red sea of church wine. Its undertow pulled me under and I drowned. I woke only this noon when all was already lost. And so, what do I do? I sit at this table and eat, I who should have been a sentry at the doorpost, waiting to wave away the Angel of Death with the lamb’s blood of my true Christian faith.”

  He filled a jug with wine and drank long and unrelentingly. Finally, he breathed.

  “O beati martyris Santiago, Alonso is already dead. He has returned to his God. Joshua may yet still be alive, though it is unlikely that he will survive the efforts of the Holy Office to extract a confession and a list of other names. Sancta Maria mater. And what they have done to Doña Gracia? Tomorrow they all go to the quemadero to be sacrificed like Jesu Christo, our Lord … or at least, my Lord. Oh, all is darkness,” he wailed, “All is night.” He placed his head on his plate and once again, passed into a drunken sleep.

  Moishe looked at me, a glance that was an ocean. Then he looked away and ate the food that was on his plate.

  Padre Luis sat up suddenly, his face spackled with lamb and stew. “Hearken unto my sermon of fire for I have had a vision,” he intoned. “Oh, here at this table of plenty. Oh, here in this Andalusian Gethsemane. Yea, He will rescue and redeem them for their lives are precious to him. O sweet wine! O love, who ever burnest and never consumest! O charity! O succulent lamb! O fruit abundant and moist! The beast and the false prophet will be cast into a lake of flame. The fire they kindle for their enemies will burn themselves only. Oh, for I have dreamt of the heifer-red wall of fire, I who drink deeply and stew in both regret and sorrow. O raisins and almonds! The sea shall part and they shall walk through its red flames as if through a curtain. Oh, were I a man and not a lamb or adafina stew. Though our sins be scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. For this has been written in fire and the words themselves are enflamed. Oh, shall I drink!” He reached for a jug of wine but succeeded only in overturning it. Then he rested his addle-pated head on his plate and slept again as the wine overflowed the table.

  Moishe stood up. “His vision,” he said. “Now I know what to do.”

  “Drink less,” I said. “Few flagons contain as much wine as he. The only vision he has is doubled.”

  “He is truly farshikkered, but his pickled words have reminded me. A curtain of flame, some burning letters: fire will save them from fire.”

  Moishe recounted a marvel he’d seen at a shtetl wedding where a magician—a kishef-makher—had walked through a wall of fire and been unharmed. Everyone thought it was sorcery or else a propitious and divine intervention for the wedding. Like the gefilte fish. The man had chanted some obscure prayers, touched a torch to the ground, then disappeared into the burning wall of flame that he’d created. After a few horrifying minutes, he reappeared, smiling, bowing, and carrying doves. Moishe wasn’t the only one in tears.

  In whispers, Moishe’s father had explained: it only looked like the man had walked through fire. Imagine that the magician had poured oil onto the earth in the shape of a kuf, a , his father had said. When the letter was on fire, he walked into the space at the bottom, waited inside for a few minutes and then slipped out from the opening at the top. The doves had been in his pocket like two pieces of bread, waiting to make a wondrous—and untoasted—sandwich. “Sometimes,” said Moishe’s father, “we say ‘b’shin, kuf, resh,’ and spell out the Hebrew word for ‘lie,’ sheqer. Kuf is at the heart of this lie, also, though it is a marvellous lie, like much in this world.”

  “With this trick,” Moishe said, “we will arrange the escape.”

  There were three things that we needed.

&n
bsp; Oil.

  A disguise so that Moishe could appear at the lion’s den of the quemadero.

  Beytsim the size of lions or small ships. It would help if they would roar or at least tack into the wind.

  There was a cloak and a hat on a hook in the hall outside the kitchen. Wearing these things, one could no more recognize Moishe than one could read the Mishnah between the hairs of a twilit pig.

  We found lamp oil in the kitchen.

  As for the beytsim, we’d have to rely on the principle that, if necessity is the mamaleh of invention, then desperation is the mother of beytsim the size of two shvitzy schooners.

  I would be conspicuous and so we went in search of a means of concealment. And Moishe wanted one more look at the genizah.

  There was a large thick book, the size of a gravestone. No words were stamped on its mottled rabicano binding, nothing to indicate its Hebrew insides. Moishe hauled it off the shelf, and without reading it, carried it upstairs to the seder table, pushing aside the plates and food and cups. He opened the book and began cutting at its pages with a carving knife.

  I did not understand the reason for this surgery.

  “Now, there’s room for you. Once I close the cover, I can carry you and no one will know you’re there.”

  It was a coffin of words and I was its hidden meaning.

  “Shver tsu zayn a Yid,” I said. “It’s hard to be a hidden Jew. Just don’t forget me.”

  Chapter Twenty

  From inside the book, I could hear the shushkeh of Moishe’s voice as he spoke quietly, keeping us both calm, the way one might soothe a skittish horse.

  It was a long walk to the quemadero and several times, Moishe turned into an alley and opened the book a crack so that I could have fresh air. It was not difficult to know which way to go. Many had already lined the streets to witness the execution parade: the brotherhoods wearing their pointed hoods, the pasos, the elaborate floats depicting Jesus, Mary, and scenes from the Stations of the Cross. There were penitents carrying crosses, and a swarm of Inquisitors led by the Red Queen himself, the Grand Dragon Torquemada. The procession led to the quemadero and from there its route went to the Catedral. But it wouldn’t arrive. Our fire, the chaos of the kuf, would create a thousand individual processions of panic and fear, in the midst of which the Jews could hide.

  Moishe shuffled like an old man into the square, the jug of oil concealed beneath his cape. There were a few guards standing around, kibitzing, laughing, waiting casually for the crowds. I felt Moishe walking, pouring oil in a kuf shape. Or so I imagined.

  We waited behind a stumpy wall on the edge of the square. Moishe opened the book a little, as if checking the words were still there. After some time, the sound of crowds and music increased. The procession had arrived. Moishe closed the book. Once again, everything was filtered through words.

  The place would soon be thick with crosses, actual size.

  The higher-ups, the balebatim, would climb up into the stands to be a little closer to God than the rest of us. Except for the condemned who would soon be nothing more than an ascending curl of dark smoke that God would inhale, then expel with the full force of His divine lungs, blowing them all to hell.

  The expiration of the living.

  I heard trumpets. Not the end-of-the-world trumpets of the revelation, but corporeal horns, signalling the end of some Jews.

  Then singing.

  Venite, adoremus.

  Because I led thee out of the land of Egypt, thou hast prepared a Cross for thy Saviour.

  Because I brought thee into a land exceeding good, thou hast prepared a Cross for thy Saviour.

  O My people.

  Then the sound and fury of the Grand Inquisitor, a sermon signifying voluble nothing for I could understand but few words from inside the book. Only his wrath and righteousness, the febrile excoriation of the sinful by an alter kaker.

  Then the fervent jeering of the crowd.

  More words.

  Moishe dropped the book and stepped forward.

  Its wing-like pages opened, a magician releasing a hidden dove. I flew—nu, where else?—onto his shoulder.

  He bent down ready to touch the torch to the long inflammable tail of the kuf. Then without warning, those tied to the stakes began to sing as those before had sung.

  Sh’ma Yisroel, they sang. Hear O Israel.

  The others, chained together, waiting their own execution, sang also.

  Sh’ma Yisroel Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad.

  Sarah was bound by ropes to the stake. And she, too, sang with defiance.

  The faces of the about-to-die were beatific. The world was a broken vessel and they were pouring like light from between the cracks. This was the incorporeal song of themselves, a quantum song beyond time and space.

  There was shouting from the crowd, but the singers continued.

  Rabbi Daniel’s arms were tied to his side, but somehow he had managed to free one of his hands. Before anyone else noticed, he had reached up and clasped the tefillin box strapped to his forehead and torn it away. Tefillin, the Judaizing badge his captors were happy to have him display.

  A guard ran toward him, sword raised to separate the arm from the rabbi’s body.

  The rabbi threw the tefillin box like a hand grenade. It was, we assumed, only filled with prayers.

  It burst into flame. A yontef cocktail. He must have planned to light the kindling beneath him. He would not let them take his death from him. The fire was his own.

  But his half-tied arm moved as if it were broken and he had missed the pyre beneath him.

  Instead, the box landed on the ground and rolled into the trail of oil. The kuf ignited, a wall of flame that surrounded the stakes and separated the condemned from the others. The soldier was caught in between. His robes turned to fire and he ran screaming into the crowd that opened before him. He ran thirty feet and then toppled to the ground, burning like a trash heap.

  Moishe dropped his torch and walked before the stands. He looked steadily into the shocked faces of the priests, nobles, the powerful. He raised his hands with the Biblical drama of a prophet.

  “This is not the end, it is Ein Sof—there is no end. But I am going now. I bid you all zay gezunt—a fond farewell.”

  Then he ran into the space at the bottom of the kuf, disappearing into what looked like unrelenting hellfire.

  From the outside, it appeared that the heretics—Jews and conversos—would be consumed by this lake of fire.

  Inside, we were Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace: surrounded though untouched by flame. Then a geshrey wailing. The rabbi’s clothes were on fire, the pyre beneath him burning. Moishe seized the knife from his belt, thrust it through the flames and slashed the ropes binding the rabbi. He threw the rebbe to the ground. We had little time before we’d either be overcome by the heat or else the kuf would consume its fuel. Moishe cut the others free and Sarah ran to cover the rabbi in her shawl. She helped him up and guided him as he staggered.

  Moishe could not separate those chained together by iron, but we could lead them to safety, escaping from the open top of the kuf. It led directly into a long alleyway, a street of weavers. Those who stood there, watching the auto-da-fé, moved quickly away, crossing themselves and muttering prayers. We were dybbuk spirits, walking ghosts, consumed by fire, beginning our God-forsaken pilgrimage to hell.

  We turned a corner. There was Padre Luis sitting on a barrel.

  “Good work,” he said and jumped down. “Now, quick—in the barrel.”

  Did he expect us all to climb inside a single barrel? Na, even Ali Baba’s forty thieves had one each.

  But Doña Gracia—we hadn’t recognized her in the line of those chained together, she was so stooped and dirty and her clothes were torn—moved forward and pulled back the lid. Inside were the stolen red robes from the Catedral. Those whose hands were free draped the robes around the others, hiding their chains and sanbenito smocks.

  Moishe held
me beneath his cape.

  An apikoros procession—a march of heretics—walking to the water.

  As much as possible, we kept to the alley’s dusky arteries, though eventually we had to cross the jugular of Calle del Agua, lined with celebrants waiting for the procession to pass on its way to its final destination, the Catedral. They hadn’t yet heard of the escape from fire.

  Murmurs in the crowd as we went by. We were a raggle-tag procession of shlumperdik clerics wandering away from the Catedral and into the dark yard of a cobbler’s shop. Rabbi Daniel wobbled unsteadily, supported by Sarah.

  How to kvell with joy and relief, smooch and embrace before a singed rabbi?

  “Sarah,” Moishe said.

  “Basherter,” Sarah said, touching his soot-streaked cheek.

  Then she saw something down the calle.

  “Rabbi.” She pulled him into the obscurity of the covered stairs behind the shop. The others quickly followed.

  Two huge church bulvans—cattle-thick bruisers. Moishe strode up to them but said nothing. And he did not resist as they seized him and ox-marched him away.

  Sarah had saved everyone. Moishe would waddle like a gunsel into the brig if it would continue to keep them safe.

  And I would follow.

  They dragged us across the city. Finally, they threw us onto the fetid shmutzy straw of a cell. I knew where we were. The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition did not host its guests at a five-star establishment. This place was rated but one farkakteh Yiddish star. And we’d seen it from the other side.

  What happened next?

  Bupkes.

  We waited.

  Time can be a scarifying lash when your world is a small room and you’ve nothing to do but wait for the bullwhip of the inevitable.

  Night then dawn.

  Saturday. At first, we strode about the room.

  “We are,” Moishe said, “as my father used to say, ‘Er dreyt zich arum vi a forts in rosl.’ A fart blundering around in brine, not knowing what to do.”

  We were trying to think of a way out, of what we didn’t know.