by Gary Barwin
Still, the evasive half-answers of a tzadik.
There was a hot spring that burbled up from the cenote, its waters rising from a crack deep in the earth.
“Now,” Jacome said. “Where’s the door?”
On the top of the mound were several small openings. We peered in but could see nothing. Moishe dropped a rock into one. A minute passed and there was an almost inaudible splash.
The only other entrance was to follow the river into the cave, but the churning water would shlog smash you against the rocks. You’d end up the kind of immortal where you don’t live forever because you’re already dead. Unless you could hold your breath for ten minutes and avoid the rocks.
“The water was not always so strong,” she said.
Ach. As helpful as bloodletting a corpse.
“We’ll dam the river,” Jacome said. “We’ll move boulders.”
Moishe took several sacks of arquebus gunpowder out of the bag hanging from his shoulder. They would blow their way to kingdom come.
I flew to the top of the mound. I’d squeeze myself into one of the openings.
Reverse birth.
It’d be almost entirely dark inside, the small holes like stars far above. Perhaps I could find the Fountain and bring back its waters.
One squeeze of Aaron, the immortal sponge, and they’d forget their pain. Or live forever.
I eyed a likely hole behind a jagged rock.
Perhaps if I weren’t so ample. If I’d watched myself: Did I need to do all that fressing? Still, I thought I might fit inside.
I pushed myself through. How? Like anyone else, first one wing and then the other. Immediately I began to fall. I only knew which way was up because it was the direction I wasn’t going. Then I found my wings and began to flap.
I saw bupkes. Nothing. Nada. I flew in little circles, not knowing where the walls were, not knowing how far was down. I heard the gurgling of water. The Fountain or the shpritzing of a kvetchy sea serpent? I could not tell.
Then a rumbling. Some kind of upset tuml in the kishkas of the cave. Then a raining down of water from above. Then—Sh’ma Yisroel—the vessels of the world burst open.
Gevalt. An explosion. Then another. Keneynehoreh. Suddenly it was light and I saw the outside above me.
Boulders fell. Water roared over me as if the sky had turned liquid. Up was down and I was swept into the churning of a hot current, flapping, trying not to drown. The ceiling of the cenote had collapsed. The firmament was broken. There were no stars but only the shocking blue sky.
I’d fallen into the Fountain. If I was going to die, I was going to die wet with immortality. I flapped. Each sinew and bone ached but I was able to rise.
Moishe? Where was Moishe? What had happened?
The cenote was an open volcano, but with water and air instead of fire. And falling stone. I flew into the sky above this grave pit. The river poured over the broken edge, no longer into the cave mouth where Moishe and Jacome had been.
Though I burned with pain, I searched.
My captain. My Moishe. My other.
He was gone.
Nothing but the unbridled river flowing over the open pit of the Fountain. It was a jumble of broken rock. Moses lost before he reached the Promised Land.
They all were gone.
Moishe. Jacome. Utina.
They must have been buried beneath the fallen stones.
Moishe. My captain. My shoulder.
Nu. So there’s that question, And then what happened? Let me tell you. Five hundred years. It happens. It’s takeh why I have these words.
Was I shpritzed by the Fountain when I fell? Or did it pish on the gantseh megillah, the whole story?
They say when I tell it, it seems as if it goes on forever. Na. I was that story, have become the whole shpiel. Have passed it down to a long line of pisher parrots who also tell it. And tell it to you now. What, they were busy being something else? Any life is just another life out of order.
As long as you have the words.
Emes, I always said: I want to live forever. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.
And Moishe? I flew over the broken Fountain. Along the river. Through the gantseh jungle. For days. Weeks. Months. I could not find him.
This never leaves my farmishteh feygeleh mind.
I saw bupkes. Nothing. Emptiness. No finger reaching, no shmatte scrap of britches, no moaning voice. Maybe he thought I had died? Maybe he searched for me?
Maybe Jacome pushed him, or he jumped in and spluttered down the river and was dunked in the Fountain, his head klopped, stars prickling for a moment instead of eyes.
Maybe he searched his endless life for Sarah? If only for a second.
Ach, I can see them, hobbling old and toothless. Two zkeynim. An old bubbie and an alter kaker zadie shuffling about, forgotten by time.
“Is good?” Sarah mumbles.
“Yes, mayn libeh,” Moishe says. “My love.” He takes her hand. They wobble. “Nu, let us hodeveh cultivate our gortn. As the psalm says, ‘That the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into our garden, and eat the pleasant fruits.’ ”
Or they fall together on the ground and shmunts, their bodies soft as alteh yidn payayas. “Oy, Sarah,” he says. “Oy!”
Ei! I wish I were on his wizened pupiklech shoulder, telling these codswallop bobeh mayseh tales to his eyniklech grandchildren as if they were mine. My Moishe. I wish that the mamzer were here.
Ach but I’m getting shmaltzy. And what parrot wants to get all shmutzik with chicken-fat shmaltz?
They say I repeat myself. But I remember. Too much. Stories I would live again, keneynehoreh. Despite myself.
Not that I mind telling you. As I said, I’m glad you asked. And the zadie over there is still shloffing.
They say I’m living history. Ach. I’m the farkakteh book of geshichte stories. Some wandering siddur, a meshugener crazy Messiah, the flesh made word. So, nu, maybe someone could call an editor, es tut mir vey, I ache everywhere. But, azoy, I remember so that Moishe, wherever he is, doesn’t have to.
Over each horizon, more horizons. From the printing press to the typewriter to the text message. I have lived long. Oy, there were years of zaftik parrots in Florida. Though no one special. Years of sailing. Shtupping. Kibitzing. Sailing. Remembering. Kibitzing. Shtupping. Remembering.
Ach, it’s a life. A wonder tale. And I try not to notice that—can I help it?—all the time our tucheses are plonked in the sitz-bath of story. You think, genug shoyn, enough already. But nu. Gey plotz. What can you do? You try not to let tsuris make you old.
Which reminds me: A man goes to the theatre with his son.
“One adult and one child,” he says at the box office.
“That’s no child,” the ticket seller says. “He looks at least thirty.”
“I can help it that he worries?”
Acknowledgements
Writing this novel was a voyage into a world unknown to me and, like the fabled ursine mountaineer, I travelled to see what I could see, learning what destination I hoped for as I found it, though I had advice and encouragement on the way. The metaphor of a crew helping me build, rebuild and sail my own ship of Theseus is apt here and I’m deeply grateful.
Sculling and scouring readers and inspiriting coxswains include Craig Conley, Mike Warwick, Sandra Stephenson, Gregory Betts, Chris Piuma, Myrna Barwin (my mom), Peter Borwein, André Alexis, Martha Baillie, Stuart Ross, Emily Schultz, Brian Joseph Davis and Natalee Caple. I gained invaluable insight about parrots from Chris Pannell.
I’d like to thank the supporters of public funding for the arts, for time and assistance through grants received from the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council. I’m also appreciative of the opportunity to muster and buff as a result of my year as writer-in-residence at Western University.
I am grateful to Yiddish maven Michael Wex who idiom-proofed my shpritzing to make certain it was shipshape; to copy editor Angelika Glover
for her perspicacious this-, that- and whichcraft; and, especially, to my remarkable editor, Amanda Lewis, whose keen insight ensured I navigated by shtern and not by shtick. I’d also like to express great appreciation to my agent, Shaun Bradley, of the appropriately named Transatlantic Agency, for, among other things, believing that this book could find land and then helping me find it when none was certain. And to my wife, Beth Bromberg: this book—as most things—would simply not be possible without her.
I have dedicated this book to my family—my wife, parents, in-laws, my children and my late grandparents. I have tried to infuse it with wonder, thoughtfulness, wit, intelligence, culture, love and compassion. If I have succeeded in this in any way, it is because I have learned these things from them.
As a reader, the parrot Aaron is a polyglot, omnivore and a plunderer, and the complete sources of his learning are obscure. However, certain texts can be noted: Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island; Fyodor Dostoyevsky, “The Grand Inquisitor” from The Brothers Karamazov; Capt. Charles Johnson, A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates; Mary Johnston, 1492; Rafael Sabatini, Captain Blood; Shakespeare, The Tempest; Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Two Years Before the Mast; Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness; Edward Kritzler, Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean; Michael Wex, Just Say Nu; and a great variety of books on history, language and seafaring too numerous to mention here.
Excerpts from the novel have appeared in Joyland (joylandmagazine.com) and The Dalhousie Review.
Gary Barwin is a writer, composer, multimedia artist and the author of twenty books of poetry, fiction and books for children. His recent books include the short fiction collection, I, Dr. Greenblatt, Orthodontist, 251-1457, and the poetry collections Moon Baboon Canoe and The Wild and Unfathomable Always. A PhD in music composition, Barwin has been Writer-in-Residence at Western University and Young Voices E-Writer-in-Residence at the Toronto Public Library, and has taught creative writing at a number of colleges and universities. Born in Northern Ireland to South African parents of Ashkenazi descent, Barwin moved to Canada as a child. He is married with three adult children and lives in Hamilton, Ontario.
www.garybarwin.com