Yiddish for Pirates

by Gary Barwin

  The captured Captain Rodriguez was tasked with guiding us toward a Spanish convoy of ships. He told us it would be unprotected, for what seaborne bandits roamed this distant side of the Ocean Sea?

  Rodriguez would guide us to a line of ships: a wind-driven pantry, a floating larder sailing from Spain.

  And what would be aboard? Clothes and food, horses and cows.

  Slaves, settlers, Indians, women, guns and priests.

  Accountants. It was wished that the countless desires of the Spanish should be counted. All exported loot would be recorded and taxed.

  And what if the Indians returned to this new world like burning coals to Newcastle?

  “They bring them back because they kill them here,” Moishe said. And indeed, Indians were quickly disappearing from their own lands.

  Disease. Overwork. Abuse. Starvation. The Four Grim Nag-riders of Empire.

  Some Indians had been shipped across the Ocean Sea to Spain for curiosity and slavery. Many who survived were returned. Ferdinand and Isabella had changed their crowned minds: It was official, Indians were now subjects of Spain and had souls. They could not be captured or enslaved. Unless in war or by virtue of their interest in fressing upon the flesh of other subjects.

  As Moishe put it, “Subject suppers are not allowed.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “No soul food.”

  Indians must now be subjugated like any peasant. Africans, on the other hand, still had no soul, were strong and well adapted to working and were already used to slavery, having a rich résumé of capture by other Africans and by Arabs and Europeans. It would take thirty years for Africans to have souls. Or, takeh, souls that could be saved by the church.

  It might be that Jesus saves. But Moses shops.

  As we would soon shop aboard the Spanish fleet for food and clothes, animals and comforts. We would free the slaves and likely fillet the wispy souls from the mortal flesh of the priests.

  “By the time this day sinks below the horizon, we will be in sight of the convoy,” Rodriguez told Moishe.

  “Good,” Moishe said. “We’ll be able to see their sails by the faint light of the stars but our ship will be invisible. I’ve just asked the crew to paint our own sails black.”

  And so we steered a shadow, the only sounds the hidden windharp of sheets and sails, the whistling nostrils and wheezing lungs of Jacome, and the heavy breathing and intermittent pickle-grepsing of the rest of the crew anticipating battle.

  Between each ship of the convoy and the next, there would be space as between teeth in an alter kaker’s maw. We would sail close to a single caravel, board it, bully it of plunder, and be gone before the other ships knew what hadn’t yet hit them. Then we would sail into the dawn, our hold bulging, ready to plotz with spoil.

  Night came fast. A sea empty of all but dark and distance.

  Moishe summoned Rodriguez.

  “Nu?”

  “Patience, Captain.”

  “If there is no ship, Rodriguez, Death will need rummage through your wounds to find you.”

  “The ships will soon be before us,” Rodriguez said steadily, though his face was pale.

  Two bells. Middle watch. I flew into the dark sky. Ahead of us, a sheyneh beautiful sight.

  I made a slip knot of the air and landed on Moishe’s shoulder.

  “Off the starboard bow.”

  The undulating sails of a Spanish ship, luminous in the dim light.

  “Oy!” Moishe shouted to the sleeping crew. “You mangy yam gazlonim. You farkakteh Yiddishe pirates, time for a bisl Jewish flamenco.”

  We went to work immediately, mustering all the canvas we were able. We rigged out oars for extra yards. And, for still more speed, we wet down the sails by buckets of water whipped up to the masthead. We would run quickly toward our prey.

  Surprise is best attained by those who outrun expectation.

  Moishe peered into the night. We had no telescope. For such a glass we would need to squint a hundred years into the future.

  Moishe could make out only that there was a ship.

  At three bells, I flew again above the mainmast to observe our prey.

  There was but a gloaming light, but I saw. She was armed, full of men, her sides porcupined by cannon and bristling with menace. We were a fox that had broken into a henhouse crammed with vicious hounds. Our small caravel and four-pounders were no match. We would best attain victory through escape.

  Though all light on board had been extinguished, and even the lamp in the binnacle removed, it was clear from the movements on the Spanish deck that we had been seen.

  I returned to inform the crew of Rodriguez’s treachery. Jacome was quick to press his pockmarked cutlass against the Spaniard.

  “This man o’ war is my brother’s ship.” Rodriguez smiled smugly. “He is the Capitan General of the Spanish navy.”

  Jacome was not pleased by this information. He thrust his mangy face into Rodriguez’s and snarled, “I shall slice open your two-faced belly like a vermin-infested grainsack, then unfurl your duplicitous kishkas over the gunwales to be the living traitorwurst of sharks.”

  “However death finds me, my end shall be honourable,” Rodriguez said.

  “Your end shall be bloody as my blade shtups your dark star.”

  “Halt on dem zokn,” Moishe said. “Hold your geezer beard, old man. His tuches will go nowhere without us.”

  Rodriguez was bound to the mizzen and we convened a painted-into-a-corner council.

  “We have no choice but retreat,” I said.

  “It is too late,” Fernández said.

  “So, nu,” said Isaac the Blind, raising his chicken-bone fist. “We shall fight like Maccabees.”

  “And our end shall be Masada.” Shlomo: always ready to rouse a fatalistic cheer.

  “But the Captain Rodriguez and his son,” Yahíma said. “Hostages.”

  “Fnyeh,” Samuel said. “The Spanish will only discover their false bones and teeth in the flotsam of our cannon-splintered sloop. One reads the guestbook only after battle.”

  A pirate ship: a barnacle-keeled kibbutz. A parliament of gonifs and rogues. Yabbering was how we decided our orders.

  The Spanish were attacking?

  So maybe it’s time for a committee.

  While we considered various ingenious nautical subterfuges, Moishe had been gazing at motes in the empty air.

  “Take Rodriguez. Bind him over the pisk mouth of a leeward cannon,” he said. “I will take his son in a skiff to the Spanish. Tonight, I am not a pirate but an honourable hidalgo to be received with courtesy.”

  Moishe had Shlomo take down our Shmuel-skull and candlesticks, and raise the Spanish flag. Young Rodriguez—Pedro—was a weedy boychik of about seventeen. He was led to the cannon over which his father was tied.

  “Father!” he cried, weeping piteously. His father said nothing.

  “Why so farklemt?” Moishe said. “We intend only to divide his body to match his duplicitous soul. Unless …”

  Moishe rested his hand reassuringly on Pedro’s shoulder.

  “This evening, we row over to pay our respects to your uncle, the Capitan General. You will introduce me as Don Miguel de Levante, a hidalgo of Navarre. You will play this spiel of crypto-Jewry until the curtain falls, we return to our ship, then sail to safety. As long as we are betrayed by neither trickery nor chance, this cannon will not be needed and your father will remain unbageled.”

  That evening, Don Miguel de Levante and Don Pedro Rodriguez were rowed by some of our crew to the man o’ war, the Encarnación. I travelled on Moishe’s elaborately tailored shoulder, for Moishe was a hidden Jewish wolf in a Spanish captain’s clothing, plain to see as his nose. The big macher Capitan General Don Luis Rodriguez stood impressively on the quarterdeck, dressed ongepatshket Rococco like a Torah in gold brocade and plush velvet. A priest stood beside him.

  “Nephew,” Don Luis said.

  “My most respectful and loving greetings, Uncle,” Pedro s
aid. Uncle and nephew kissed and embraced. Then, “May I present Don Miguel Sánchez Villalobos de Levante of Navarre. A friend to us in these distant waters.”

  Moishe bowed deeply. “Capitan, I am at your service,” he said with the slick grace of a courtier.

  Don Luis swept his brocaded arm and introduced the priest who stood beside him on deck. Fray Juan de Las Castillas looked briefly at Pedro and then at Moishe and me for a soul-scouringly long time. Moishe bowed courteously and remained impassive as he was surveyed. Pedro smiled weakly as if to say, “I have the face of a nebbish, how could I have the beytsim to play false?”

  “Where is your father?” Don Luis asked. “So far from the land of our birth, he does not greet his own brother?”

  “My father offers his most loving recollection and his deepest regrets,” Pedro replied.

  “Because of an oppressing fever,” Moishe explained, “he must rest within his cabin.”

  “If my brother cannot visit me, then I shall visit him. Let us now board your skiff.” The capitan began to stride aft toward the gangway.

  “Don Luis,” Moishe called in a low voice of much urgency, “there is great danger. Our ship is seized, the captain, your brother, held by pirates and slung over a cannon’s muzzle. We dared not divulge this most important truth for the brigands watch us with murderous keen eyes. We were to play as if all were well. Betrayal means a cannonball through his midst. They have sent us on a ruse. You must move as if unaware of this.”

  Moishe had gone beyond the rehearsed script. We were only to have pretended to be other than who we were and then return. Don Luis looked to his nephew. The boychik Pedro’s confusion was apparent on his anxious face, though certainly it reflected the tsuris of his father’s plight.

  “Early morning,” Moishe said, “these corsairs will storm your ship when all but the watch sleeps without thought of danger.”

  “Some accounts of piracy in these Indies have been made,” Don Luis said. “But these only in the tales of explorers—Columbus, Pinzón, others—as apt to liken a fish-filled freshet to a river of gold. We did not know there was truth in these otherwise lies.”

  A slight twitch of muscle in Moishe’s mouth betrayed that he kvelled proud that his exploits were known in the courts of Castille and Aragon. Our piracies had left all either marooned or dead. He had not thought that either would be capable of report.

  “There is perhaps a means to save your brother and return his ship to his rightful care,” Moishe said.

  Don Luis ordered some drink to be brought. Our visit should appear convivial to those paskudnik rogues on the surveilling ship. We toasted to King Ferdinand and to Queen Isabella. Fray Juan raised his mug in a blessing to the Pope. Then several times, he raised his mug again. Then Moishe explained his sneaky sheygets scheme.

  Moishe and Fray Juan remained on the quarterdeck. The Spanish slid quietly into the leeside boats, sheltered by the sails, the dark, and by Moishe recounting a big megillah something to Fray Juan, vigorously windmilling his arms like a meshugener Don Quixote. On his shoulder, I exercised great care lest my end resemble nuggets and the feathered snow of pillowfights.

  The Spanish were heavy with arquebuses and swords. They would surprise the unsuspecting pirates with a pre-emptive strike guided by the shmendrik son Pedro. For, nu, it was his father who bunged the cannon.

  They began to row in dark water to the distant side of our ship.

  “Don Miguel Sánchez Villalobos de Levante of Navarre,” Fray Juan said, interrupting Moishe’s flailing diversion as soon as the Spanish had disappeared into the murk.

  “Years ago, you were a boy and ‘Miguel Levante’ was enough to hide you. I know who you are.”

  Moishe’s hand went to his sword.

  “Don Miguel, you need not joust with my ribs. I, too, have another name. Once I was a ghost named Padre Luis Dos Almos. You and this bird crept into the residence of the Archbishop of Seville. In the dark of the library, you dirked the inside of a Jew named Abraham.”

  “When one must, one can,” Moishe said. “And may one tooth travel with his immortal soul always, only so it should ache forever.” He released the hilt of his sword and bowed.

  “So, Father, this new world, come here often?” he asked. Sangfroid was Moishe’s middle name. At least when it wasn’t Sánchez Villalobos.

  “I travelled for many years,” Fray Juan said. “I knew no solid ground. I was lost. Finally, I sought to evade the iniquity of Europe here in Orbe Novo, the New World, but it festers here, like the rot and slobber of a flax dam, with the ravenous putrefaction of greed, a negligent savagery toward natives. A new and more murderous Inquisition, we exile their blood from their very bodies. Indeed, I now return from the court at Castille where I have pleaded with both King and Queen, seeking to end the destruction of the people of these Indies. I have found myself in my own voice, speaking for those who have none.”

  Fray Juan was a man seized by both wine and conviction. His face, already red with drink, flushed still further as he adopted the manner of a preacher, fulminating with great volume to his man and bird congregation.

  “I speak of those who collapse from hunger and toil. And we who kick and beat them to rise. We who knock out their teeth with the pommel of our swords. We who, for amusement, wager a single stroke of the sword can split them in two, slice head from neck, or spill entrails with but one plunge of the pike. We who toss infants into rivers, roaring with laughter and saying, ‘Boil there, you offspring of the devil!’ We who attack towns and spare neither children nor the aged, the pregnant nor women in childbed, stabbing and dismembering and cutting them to pieces as if they were sheep in the slaughterhouse. We cut off hands and hang them round the necks of our victims, saying, ‘Go now, carry the message,’ meaning, ‘Take the news to the Indians who have fled to the mountains.’ We tie our victims over smouldering fires so that, little by little, as those captives scream in despair and torment, their souls leave them. Oh, that I could describe even one-hundredth part of the afflictions and calamities that we have wrought among these innocent people! There once were many of these Indians; now there are few. May God grant enlightenment to priest and king, governor and general that they may act with justice and with wisdom. This is what I said to our Ferdinand and Isabella.”

  Moishe and I shuddered under such intensity, not to mention the spray of spume from Fray Juan’s ardent mouth, but we knew that such things of which he spoke had truly occurred. We had seen such horrors. He was ranting to ranters.

  Moishe turned to me and said, sotto voce, “He speaks of these things in court? In the shtetl, it is believed that when a wise man converses with a fool, two fools are speaking.”

  “Unless, like us,” I said, “he speaks with sword.”

  “Fray Juan,” Moishe asked, “what did you suggest Their Catastrophic Majesties do?”

  “Transport slaves from Africa,” he said.

  There was a shout from our ship in the distance. They had seen the Spanish skiffs rowing toward them. Moishe went to the bell and signalled an urgent beat to quarters. Five peals repeated.

  Then he grabbed Fray Juan. “A little business,” he said, lowering him onto deck and binding him to the shrouds. The three other Spanish crew were soon roped like rodeo calves.

  Then night flash and sky-cleaving thunder.

  From our ship, the brain-severing tumult of cannons.

  And it’s true what is said: someone else’s tuches is easy to smack. Especially when it sits in a rowboat sculling toward your cannonballs. The Spanish: we’d pissed on their backs and told them it was rain. Then we’d codswalloped them to search for umbrellas.

  Now the ocean filled the holes in their bodies as they sank into the sea.

  Except for Pedro and the Capitan: their kishkas remained unminced. Hostages are best when intact. Yahíma, Jacome and Shlomo paddled to the first skiff where each of their blades greeted the hostages’ gullets with a silver grin.

  Jacome: “Be lambs or have your
apple sauced.”

  Yahíma laughed and shook her naked bristen in their frightened faces. And though they were fulsome fruit of Platonically perfect form, the source of many a non-Platonic thought to those who beheld them, here they were weaponry, a bitter ironic power wielded to humiliate.

  Soon we had secured our captives, brought our ships broadside, thrown heaving lines over gunwales, and bound the two together.

  “Have Christian mercy—release the boy’s father, my brother,” the Capitan said.

  “Father,” wailed Pedro. “Father.”

  “Climb down the ratlines from that cross, bubeleh, we need such lumber for masts,” Moishe said to the sheygets. “But first greet your papa who filled his britches in fear.”

  “My father is a brave and honourable man,” Pedro said.

  Ham signalled to Moishe from his station near the boy’s draped progenitor.

  “He tells me your father is dead,” Moishe said. “This I knew. Nu, I was ship’s surgeon ere I was captain. Before we left the ship, your father died of fear.”

  “You killed him. He had much courage and was not afraid to die.”

  “It seems to me, he had no hesitation,” Moishe said. “But I thank you for your cooperation.”

  The boy fainted, now realizing he had danced to a gun that had already discharged. He hung limp from the shrouds that bound him to the mast.

  “When Spain learns of your infamy, you will be hunted down,” the Capitan said.

  “I am glad,” Moishe said. “Prey that seeks me is easier to find.”

  The Capitan pursed his lips and launched a slobber of spit onto Moishe’s cheek.

  Moishe remained still and expressionless, allowing the bubbling spawn to slowly roll down his face.

  “This mamzer suffers an excess of fluid,” he said. “We shall correct this by withholding food and drink while he convalesces in the hold below.” Moishe turned and nodded to Shlomo and Jacome who carried the Capitan to the hatch.

  “History will not forget your evil,” the Capitan said as they dropped him into the hold.

  “History is a game played with the dead,” Moishe replied. “The present actually happens. And nu, when they balance the scales, they’ll find a few shlog-whomped Spanish on one side, kvetching and moaning. And on the other, a heap of dead Jews and Indians. So, we do what we can to add to the Spanish side.”