Yiddish for Pirates

by Gary Barwin

Before us stood the three beguiling young crones who had attempted to entrap us. The now blind parrot rested on the shoulder of the most bountiful. They, too, did not appear to be armed with anything beyond surprise and the sorcerous terror with which they had just turned our spines into gliver human jelly.

  “Put the sword down,” the first one said, as if Moishe were brandishing anything but air.

  Moishe’s hand dropped to his side. He face rested but his eyes scanned the beach for means of escape. Not for nothing was he the Yam Gazlen, the elusive Yiddish scourge of the Indies.

  “Zorg zich nit. Don’t worry,” the second said.

  “You have your health,” said the third.

  “And we have killed the governor, Panfilo de Narváez,” said the first.

  “Eyn toyt iz far im veynik—iz far im veynik,” said the parrot.

  “Takeh,” said the second. “As you say, we killed him only once, though he deserved to die many times.”

  “As he caused many deaths.”

  “He sat on his horse gnawing cheese and commanded his men to kill thousands from our village, even as they brought them food,” the third said. “Our babies were snatched and broken against rocks. Cuffs, blows, cudgelling. They killed our families. They cut legs and arms off our sisters and mothers, our sons and daughters and fed them to their dogs.”

  “I cannot forget. My heart tastes it. I breathe its memory,” she said.

  “I, too, have seen such things,” Moishe said. “In worlds both old and new.”

  The woman considered him.

  “We escaped by hiding in a latrine pit covered by palm leaves,” she finally said. “I would not recommend it. Then we travelled by night in a canoe. We travelled for many nights, not knowing where.

  “Then we came to a small island. For years, we lived there alone and were silent. We did not want to remember even the words for what we knew.”

  The larger woman continued. “We saw where had once been a small tribe of Jews, but sometime before, they had been murdered: their houses razed, their synagogue burned, their bones, some shoes, candlesticks, all that remained. Except for this parrot.” She indicated the parrot on her shoulder. “Which spoke many of their words.”

  “Oy vey iz mir. Oy vey iz mir,” the parrot said with impeccable timing.

  So, nu, it was a parrot, but though its feathers were brighter than mine, it strutted and fretted like an idiot, full of sound and mamaloshen, but signifying nothing.

  “We also found some books of their writing hidden in a tree stump. And so we began to speak again,” she said. “These strangers’ words.”

  The women sat with Moishe in the sand. From a small sack hanging around her neck, the first woman retrieved some dried leaves and tobacco that the women assembled. The second woman removed some strands of dried grass, a small stone and a well-worn stick from a similar sack. Then she spun the stick between her palms while the first woman blew. Takeh, like this they could bring even the clay shvants of a Golem to life.

  Curls of smoke, then fire. Each woman lit a cigar. The third gave one to Moishe.

  They sat together for a few minutes, breathing slowly, exhaling clouds, looking out through the white, almost-creamy smoke.

  Then the first woman spoke. “After some years,” she said, “the great schooner of Narváez sailed to our island, anchored off the shore, and soldiers landed. We hid deep in the forest but it was a small island and they searched everywhere, digging and overturning. Finally we were found. But our skins were not their quarry. They wanted the Jews’ books. We showed them such books as we had, but they threw them away. They sought others. Then they took us as prisoners.”

  “The devil himself would not say what they did to us,” the second woman said. “How they punctured our insides with their shlechteh barbs. Who would wish to remember?”

  “Miseh meshuneh,” the third said. “Curse memory. The past poisons every future.”

  “And dos hob ich oykh in dr’erd. The hell with the present too. It fills with both the past and the bitter future,” the first said.

  The second woman continued. “We were taken to their ship and chained below with others. For months in the dark, they raped us. Then we were brought to this island. And this trap was set for you. We did what we were asked. They had broken our bones and picked their teeth with the splinters.”

  “After you escaped, Narváez and each of his sailors raped and beat us,” the third said. “And fought and drank and raped and beat us again. As every day. So when they lay shikkered, asleep as if dead, we took their knives, pulled their breeches to their knees and cut off their shlongs.

  “They soon woke—who would have expected it?—blood between their legs, pain rampaging through them, each tied to each and the three of us standing before them with arquebuses and swords ready to make portholes in their chests for their souls to breathe the sea air.

  “ ‘The good news,’ I said to them, ‘is that you do not have to eat your own shlongs. The bad news is you must eat each others’.’

  “The first clamped his mouth shut and refused. So we sliced his throat and pushed the shmuck through the slit.

  “After that, none refused.

  “Then we took a canoe and sailed around this island. We knew we would find you.”

  They had left the Spanish tied together on the shore, one large, emasculated bracelet, a wounded chew toy, soon to be eaten by dogs. Or left to the retributive devices of the islanders for Columbus and his crew had taken a skiff and rowed to their ship, then set sail in search of our ship and Eden.

  “It is time for us to leave this island, also,” the first woman said.

  So we climbed into the canoe.

  Moishe. Three übermoyels. Two parrots. An African Grey and the parrot he had blinded.

  Without reason.

  Did that parrot have a soul?

  Feh.

  So, nu, I’m like the Spanish now, counting souls and deciding whose blood to spill?

  Moishe and the three shiksas rowing furiously against the waves.

  Where were they going?

  The women were paddling to that most venerable and storied of places.

  Away. A new world in this New World.

  And their blind parrot knew no more where he was going than a windcock.

  Did I know?

  Takeh, of course: with Moishe.

  Nu, some maven wrote that a book is a dictionary out of order. You ask me, it’s the dictionary that’s farmisht. It’s a story out of order. Like when the Spanish took apart the great stones of Los Indios’ temples and remade them into their houses.

  And this I know: I follow Moishe.

  Why? The stones of my parrot heart. Rebuilt.

  The susurration and rhythmic plash of the paddles. The kvetching of the breeze. We rowed in silence. Our journey was our words.

  “And then what happened?”

  We’d search for our crew who had the map, then find the books and the Fountain. This goal had imprinted itself on our empty insides. Both hope and hopelessness abhor a vacuum.

  The ocean rose and fell, a sullen companion that said nothing of the future.

  And intermittently, the air-raid siren of the nudnik parrot sounded: “Oy vey iz mir. Oy vey iz mir. Ich hob dich. Ich hob dich.” Each phrase a doppelgänger of itself and thus a twin irritation.

  I should have left both its eyes and ripped out its tongue.

  Now that we all travelled as equals, Moishe assumed his role as captain, scanning the horizon, steering the canoe from its stern, choosing which “away” was our destination.

  I noticed something low in the water ahead of us, bobbing up and down with a kind of dopey and water-logged optimism. Moishe decided to investigate.

  It was his old friend, the barrel in which he had spent several intimate if directionless days. Lidless, it was driftwood.

  But it seemed a fated encounter, and so Moishe hauled it into the canoe, even though there was little unclaimed land in the craft and the b
arrel could no longer pursue its chosen career effectively. We were squeezed between various provisions that the women had brought from the island. Melons. Coconuts. Small sacks of cassava bread and tobacco. Spanish swords. Dried fish. Wineskin-like bladders filled with fresh water. A bottle that winked its green glass eye at Moishe. Drink me, it said. And he did, making a Shabbos-less kiddush with rum.

  It was days without land. Between the four who paddled, two watches were established. While some slept, some wished for sleep. We shared food.

  Then, on the starboard horizon: land. On the larboard: a ship.

  We gazed at both intently, trying to read their indistinct shapes.

  As we rowed closer: “My Yiddishe clipper,” Moishe exclaimed. We recognized the flag: a bloodshot eye radiating over an unfinished pyramid.

  Nu, Pharoah, we’d like to stay and finish the job, but what with these plagues and all, the working conditions for slaves have really deteriorated.

  Moishe gazed at the boat and sighed. “My ship of mutinous bastard chamooleh fools.”

  Chapter Five

  Moishe explained his plan.

  Shmuntsing, mysticism, and banditry most often occur under the black chuppah of night. And, as with such things, stealth was important, so we waited until after dark. Moishe gave such a look to the parrot that even such a shlepper as that moronic cloaca-shtreimel knew to be silent. As soon as we were in the lee shadow of the boat, Moishe quietly lowered the barrel into the still water and we once again climbed in as if it were a high-gunwaled dory, a floating womb.

  “Zayt gezunt. Be well,” Moishe whispered to the women.

  “Zay gezunt,” they replied and rowed into the darkness, dipping the paddles tentatively into the water.

  On deck, all was darkness, sleep or inattention.

  We paddled up close to the hull, an infant elephant nuzzled against the flank of its vast and sighing mother. Shh. Sleep, mama, sleep.

  The ship’s hull was scarred with patches where cannonball or shallows had broken its skin. Until the ship was properly careened and the broad planks replaced, its sides were a Harlequinade of repairs. We searched for such a pockmark, small as two fingers, then Moishe worked at it with the blade of a Spanish dirk until he had reopened the wound.

  A hole in the side of the hull.

  He had brought the rum-bottle stuffed with a damp shmatte ripped from his ragged and swamp-ripe clothes. Now he would make fire.

  In the middle of the sea, it is as simple to procure fire as it is fresh water. Both are possible if you have them already.

  The women had given Moishe a firestick, a stone, and some dry grass for kindling. Moishe pressed the end of the stick into the stone with his palms and rubbed back and forth. We should only hope for a happy and propitious ending, nu? Some minutes passed. Then a splash over the rim of the barrel and the grasses were soaked. Moishe—always expecting fate to be a mamzer—removed some still dry grass from a small sack that he had kept in safety in his shirt, and began again.

  Eventually, a weak smoke, and then the red spurt of fire. Quickly, Moishe dropped the burning grasses in the bottle and pushed its narrow neck into the wounded hull. The green world of the bottle teemed with smoke. Viperous tendrils would soon be fuming below-deck.

  “Let’s hope—keneynehoreh—we haven’t lit the orlop and its store of gunpowder,” Moishe said. “But we will soon know.”

  The ship came alive. The meshugeneh mariners aboard the Gopherwood Shmeckel scuttled fore and aft as a bees’ nest disturbed.

  We heard them buzzing, running to safety up on deck, some into the rigging.

  Moishe tipped the bottle and emptied the burning wad into the ship. He manoeuvred the barrel around toward the bow and held fast to some backstay deadeyes.

  Soon, as expected:

  “Gevalt!” the crew shouted.

  “Fire!”

  “Gotenyu, get the piss buckets.”

  “Lower the hogshead o’er the larboard gunwale.”

  “Fire!”

  “Flames behind the salt pork store.”

  “Shh! Zog’s nisht oys—don’t say it!”

  And indeed the lovely boucan barbecue fumes of burning meat billowed invitingly from the ship along with an admixture of tar and mouldy lumber—the combined tang, an alter kaker’s shvitz, his shoes, and a variety of ailing muskrat. In the fire-fighting fury and smoke-filled hoo-hah, Moishe clambered up the hull, clasping chains, deadeyes, and shrouds, then scaled the mainmast. He was a grievous and avenging angel in a fog of rum and pork-fire and from high up the cross-tree, he proclaimed:

  “Nu. Look up, for I am the voice of this cloud of sulphurous and tormenting flame. I who have turned this ship into a burning bush around which you now scurry farmisht. But don’t thank me. I have returned from the dead. That’s thanks enough. I whose putz is a great mast which requires no stays. Whose hair is an untamed and piratical porcupinity. Whose grepsn are the fortz of one who has dined on naught but forty years of rats. Whose eyes burn like twin stars and light up treasure maps with their reading. I who is not so easy to get rid of. But who were you expecting? Yoshkeh? The Messiah? A klog, but it is a farkakteh and scurvy world, but which other world would have us? I have returned as your captain and together we shall not perish but shall seek eternal youth and life whether in sea or fire, in earth or air or from the quintessence itself. Or in the sheyneh zaftikeh arms of another and their sweet knish. Remember the days that have been, the seasons we have lived, where we might sing, swear, drink, drab, and kill in vengeance as freely as cake-makers do flies, as parrots speak, or as the waves climb and fall as they seek the distant shores of the world. The white smoke—with your consent and articles—elects me again captain … if we are able to put the fire out.”

  The farklemtifying cogworks of the crew required no additional input to become yet more farklemt. Because of the obfuscating fumes of panic and smoke, they did not recognize Moishe but took his voice to be that of a dybbuk or demon of the sea. A Yiddish zombie spirit. When one is truly frightened, all fiends speak your language. In addition to their mortal fear of becoming ship-bound barbecue or drowned pickles in brine, they now felt metaphysical dread. Who was this fallen angel who had climbed the main tree? Moishe had chewed up the sails and—vo den?—overacted. He had expected his supernatural alef beytsim routine to win the hustings with eerie machismo. His crew would recognize and be swayed by yet another inventive scheme of chutzpah and seyhcl by their once-and-fugitive captain, line up obediently, and await further instruction.

  Plan B.

  “Samuel,” he called. “It’s Moishe. Vi geyts dir—how’s it going? You thought I was dead but I’m back.”

  “Abi gezunt,” Samuel replied. “But what does it matter who you are. We have a fire to kill.”

  How do you know if you’re a captain?

  Moishe clutched hold of a sheet and soared down to the poop and into the midst of the tumult. He began directing the directionless.

  “Shlomo, raise the hogshead. Yankel, dunk and fill the bucket then pass it to Samuel. Samuel, pass it to Yahíma. Down the hatch, Yahíma, pass it through to Ham …”

  The ocean was thus carried below-deck, hand to hand, bucket by bucket, and so quelled the fire.

  “Jacome and Trachim, take the charred barrels above-deck, break out the pork, and pitch the smouldering staves overboard.”

  Clothed in billows, Moishe stood amidship and became captain once again. A captain: the grammarian of ships.

  His orders brought order and dinner to the deck. The fire extinguished, the crew gathered for a seder of braised pork, no longer slaves of danger and flame. Moishe, eschewing the treyf, opted for lentils on a trencher of cornbread matzoh.

  Moishe did not tell the crew that he started the fire, preferring to leave mythic his sudden appearance in a cloud high above them. It seems we like our leaders to have something wondrous, strange and slightly troubling from their past on their résumé.

  Isaac. Samuel. Yahíma. Ham. Shlomo.
Jacome. Moishe and me. Gathered amidship around one gap-staved barrel. Yankel, Trachim, others—gathered around another.

  Moishe looking into Yahíma’s eyes.

  The horizon.

  And then what happens?

  The old love in the arms of the new.

  But before that, Samuel launched into: “Everything is not what it seems. Our ship is a new found land. Let me tell you the whole megillah.”

  His megillah, not: “Ach, so sorry—es tut mir bang—we mutinied and acted as shochet butcher on you, marlinspiking your jugular into a Trevi fountain.”

  Instead, a spiel about a battle.

  Shlomo: “We spied the pennant of Spain rising from the sea and we readied for the bubo-poxed bulvans. When we smelled the bilgey rancour of their murderous Spanish breath, I called ‘Fire,’ and we thrust our cannons through the ports and lit the fuses, and soon cannonballs crashed through the bow-bulwarks of the Spanish Reale, and raked across its deck. The surprised souls of many Spanish mariners faded as do visions of baizemer bosoms fade when we wake from a dream.”

  “But the guns of the Reale did not reply,” Shlomo said. “Its bow, towering over the forecastle of our ship—let’s call it Mamaloshen’s Revenge—came through the smoke cloud and struck us with a grinding crash. It dug deep, and we were so farmisht we thought we were sinking.”

  “Our ship—maybe we should name it the New World Broygez—rebounded from the shock,” Samuel said. “We came alongside the Reale and we were like behemoths grappling and groping yardarms, rigging and masts. Then the hand-to-hand fighting began.”

  “Hand-to-hand?” Jacome said. “More like sword-edge to brainpan. Arquebus to thorax. Fingertip to eyehole. Though my fist followed my pike into the bo’sun’s kidneys and filleted his spine so as he was gimped and could but move like a man o’ war out of water.”

  “So,” Samuel said. “We vanquished the Spanish in this chutzpenik manner just as our carrack began to plunge into the sea. We killed every one of them and just had time to retrieve our maps, our books, and some other plunder as our ship sank below the waves.

  “You stand aboard The Yellow Star. The Kike’s Revenge. The Golem of the Sea. We are in exile even from our own ship. And we don’t even know what to call it. But, as with all Jews, wherever we put our yarmulke is our home. And so what if our home is usually balding? It’s amazing what they can do with the desert nowadays. This ship? It’s our old ship. Just newer.