The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon sc-1

by Richard Zimler

  A curiosity akin to dread tugged at my heart as the drivers whipped the horses. Who were these Castilians? Did they know we were secret Jews?! Was the nobleman mocking me or acknowledging his kinship? For a moment, I saw fingers as tiny as a child’s straining in the window of the carriage as it throttled down the street. A curtain lowered, silencing my questions.

  I found Uncle in our courtyard, playing chess with Farid. His prayer shawl was neatly folded in his lap and topped with his phylacteries. After I explained what happened with Diego and the Castilian nobleman, he looked up at me and said, “Before my forces are decimated by this heathen’s let us get to the hospital and make sure Diego is treated right.”

  Farid read his lips and grinned. Uncle and I wanted to change into street clothes, and as we entered the kitchen I enquired about what he meant about the attack on Diego being planned. By way of reply, he asked, “What lives for centuries but can still die before its own birth?”

  I rolled my eyes and said, “No riddles, just an answer.”

  He frowned and marched to his room.

  A week later, I came upon the answer to Uncle’s paradox. Had I understood earlier, could I have changed our leaden destiny to gold?

  My master and I chose a route along the river because the shifting wind was now punishing us with the odor of one of the municipal dungheaps beyond the city’s crenelated walls. The public cemeteries were full, and as of late, dead African slaves had been tossed on top of the heaps. What the vultures and wolves couldn’t pick quickly enough putrefied and mixed with excrement into a nightmare smell that burned into your skin and bones like an unseen acid.

  As we passed through the Horse’s Well Gate, I recalled the metallic shiver the gates to the Judiaria Pequena made when the Old Christian guards locked the Jews inside for the night. A shout from above turned us. Our former rabbi, Fernando Losa, was waving at us to wait from the top of the Synagogue Steps. He’d become a dealer in religious Christian garments since the conversion, outfitted even the Bishop of Lisbon, may his tongue turn to powder. “Oh no, not Rabbi Losa,” I moaned. “For what terrible sin are we being made to atone?”

  Uncle laughed. A woman suddenly shrieked, “Water!” and we pressed against the wall as a rain of waste cascaded from her third-story window.

  Losa joined us puffing for breath, an exquisite scarlet cloak embroidered with a collar of pearls draped over his narrow shoulders. Thin and beak nosed, with deep-set treacherous eyes, a shiny bald head and a frowning slit for a mouth, he looked to me like a vulturine golem constructed for hunting down subterranean rodents. As a boy, I expected him to have talons rather than fingers, and in my dreams, he never spoke, always hissed. “Those wretched, filthy cows are everywhere!” he said now in a false, patrician voice.

  “At least they’re kosher,” my master noted.

  Rabbi Losa sneered and said, “This bad fortune of Diego the printer’s is what comes from talking to you about the fountain, you know.” He was referring in code to the kabbalah; it was no secret to him that Uncle wanted Diego to join his threshing circle.

  My master made a deferential bow and whispered in Hebrew, “Hakham mufla ve-rav rabanan, you are a great scholar and a rabbi of rabbis.” He glanced at me to be sure I’d catch his play on words; he was insulting Losa by accenting the letters h, a, m, and r. Together, they formed the Hebrew word for jackass.

  Uncle turned to leave, but the rabbi said, “Wait one moment!” He licked his lips as if savoring a tasty sauce. “I’ve come to give you a warning. Eurico Damas says that should you ever so much as whisper his name in your sleep, he’ll chop you up and serve you inside sausage casing. Best keep your beak out of private affairs, little man!”

  My heart sank; Damas was a New Christian arms dealer who’d won contracts from the King for spying on his former brethren and who had recently taken a child bride. Two weeks ago, Uncle had barged in on a secret meeting of the Jewish court and demanded to have him judged for drowning the newborn infant of a flower seller he’d raped and refused to marry. The investigation ended a week ago, when the flower seller herself mysteriously disappeared. Uncle’s name was to have been kept secret by the rabbinical court, but apparently someone—probably Losa himself—had given it to Damas.

  “Is that all you came to tell me?” my master demanded.

  “That should be quite enough. If it weren’t for my intervention, he’d have come himself.”

  “Many thanks, oh great scholar and rabbi of rabbis,” Uncle answered with an ironic bow.

  Losa pulled in his chin like a hen, watched us leave with the bitter but patient air of a man who has lost the battle but will continue to wage the war.

  As we rushed toward the city center and the hospital, I daydreamed about protecting my master from a succession of kabbalistic demons and Biblical giants. Perhaps I’d never outgrow such fantasies. And yet, passing the clamor of Lisbon’s great fishmarket and port, they seemed suddenly fitting. After all, Uncle had sworn protection over me as a boy in order to take over my mystical guidance. Did it imply a reciprocal promise I’d never before realized?

  When we explained our mission to a bailiff at the All Saints Hospital, he informed us proudly that the nobleman who had brought Diego in had been none other than the Count of Almira. The name meant nothing to me, but I wrote it in gold in my Torah memory because of my attraction for his traveling companion. A girlish nun escorted us to Diego’s room. It was gloomy and low-ceilinged, stank of vinegar, amber and death. Over each of the twelve cots hung a bloody crucifix. Yellowing linen curtains opened to show men tied with leather belts to beds, peering white-eyed and hungry for life, encrusted in bandages, stinking like manure. Shutters were partially opened for a view of the Dominican Church across the square.

  Diego was in the last bed. Recognizing his large sombre eyes and saffron-colored turban, I smiled with joy and nervousness. But he was wholly changed. His shaved cheeks were the white of marble, nicked here and there with blood. Jowls previously hidden gave his face a heavy, pendulous attitude. He looked suddenly like the kind of tender man who gave presents easily, who doted on children, but who paid a price for neglecting himself—the kind of man he may have been before exile and isolation.

  The gash across his chin had been cauterized and stitched. When he spotted us, he gasped and sat up. Involuntarily, he turned his face to the wall as if preparing for death.

  My uncle stopped, his penetrating emerald eyes seeking to exchange places with Diego’s. When I prodded him forward, he walked to his friend and offered an encouraging smile. From here, we could see he was feverish with sweat. I prayed it wasn’t plague. “You look well—the bleeding’s stopped,” my master said.

  “You shouldn’t have come, seen me like this.” Diego faced the wall again and closed his eyes.

  “You can start growing back your beard as soon as your chin has healed,” I observed.

  He whispered, “I thank you for coming, but I must ask you both to leave.”

  Uncle nodded at me to accede to his request. When I reached the hall, he was sitting at the foot of Diego’s bed. Their whispered conversation was giving my master wild, whirling gestures. Diego hid his eyes behind his hands, bent his head sadly. I said prayers until my uncle came to me. He sighed his frustration. “A bad situation. Diego shall have to suffer for a while.”

  “I guess its a good thing we’re not all subject to a Levite’s restrictions,” I replied.

  “We’re each of us subject to outside influences. One must accommodate them or live in the wilderness as a hermit. And even there…” My master’s voice trailed away as he scratched his scalp. “Let’s get out of this dungeon,” he said. “I’m beginning to itch all over.”

  “Maybe some manuscripts would cheer him up,” I said. “We could ask to borrow those Latin treatises he wants so badly and…”

  “No books!” Uncle said, holding up both his hands as if to stop an onrushing carriage.

  Outside, a droning chant was shivering the warm ai
r of the Rossio; the daily procession of flagellants was on its way to the Riverside Palace. The sun revealed in Uncle’s drooping eyes that his soul had been brushed with Diego’s despair. He said, “Truth did not come into the world naked, but came clothed in images and names. And lies? What clothes do lies wear?”

  “The same ones as truth,” I said. “It’s up to us to distinguish.”

  “Yes,” he agreed in a dry voice. “And are all crimes seen by God?”

  “You mean, will those boys who attacked Diego be punished?” I asked.

  “If you like.”

  I was considering my response when Uncle squeezed my hand. “Sorry. I can’t bear to talk any more about this. Let’s go for the walk we’d planned.”

  “But I haven’t brought my sketchbook,” I replied.

  “Draw the birds in your Torah memory, my son.”

  Uncle and I spent a lovely afternoon together, watching our beloved cranes. To see creatures so large and gangly, so white, descending from out of the blue like feathers—it took our breath away. Breezes swept by us with the gentleness of flowers, and when my uncle told me it was time to get back home, I was surprised to find myself separate from the day itself.

  When we reached our house, Cinfa and Aunt Esther were preparing our Passover seder in the kitchen, had spread a netting of rice kernels across our best white tablecloth to search for impurities. The house was heavy with humid, intoxicating scents; a magnificent lamb was roasting slowly on a spit in our hearth, its fragrant juices dripping and hissing against the braziers. From its heady scent, I knew it had been basted with the grease from those pouches of luxurious fat that are ewes’ tails—a cooking secret brought by Esther from Persia. “Smells heavenly,” I said.

  “Prayer before food,” Uncle scoffed. He slipped down into the cellar.

  I took a mortar and pestle, apples, walnuts, dates and honey with me to the store; in between customers I’d prepare haroset.

  Waiting on customers freed my mother to help Cinfa and Esther in the kitchen. The store was quiet until I was taken with the idea of displaying our recently arrived bananas from Portuguese Africa nearest the door. Perhaps it was a coincidence, but suddenly we were the place to be. Secret Jews kept me busy all afternoon with last minute orders for that evening’s Passover seder. By the time pink and gold clouds began lighting the sky as heralds of sunset, I was exhausted. I bolted the doors, drew the curtains and sat alone in silent prayer until Uncle called me into the kitchen. He looked splendid under his white robes, had his hair combed forward into its Sabbath swirl. “By any chance, did Reza stop by the store?” he asked in a hopeful voice.

  My cousin Reza, Esther and Uncle’s only living child, had married recently and would be spending Passover with her husband’s family. “No, was she supposed to?” I asked. “I thought that she said she wasn’t sure she’d be able to come at all tonight.”

  “I just thought that maybe…” Uncle took my hand, and it was with sadness that he told me, “I found the face of Haman for my Haggadah. Perhaps all our work will proceed smoothly now.”

  My master was illuminating a Haggadah for a family of secret Jews in Barcelona, had had a difficult time finding a face amongst our acquaintances which could serve as a model for Haman. But why was he sad? Because of Reza’s absence? Before I could ask, he began his blessing over me. I hugged him, and for the first time in memory, he let his body bend to my love. Had I won a greater trust from him in the last few days? Suddenly infused with that resolute force of his, as if he’d drunk in my energy and concern, he kissed my lips and gripped me. “Passover is here!” he whispered. We shared an exultant smile.

  Cinfa and Judah set the table. The saffron-colored ceramic Passover plate which our neighbor Samir had made for us was set with the cilantro, lettuce, roasted egg and grilled lamb bone which were symbolic parts of the meal. With Esther’s approval, I added a spoon of my haroset, representing the mortar with which the Israelites, as slaves, built the tombs, palaces and pyramids of Egypt. Our matzah was set under a linen napkin. The silver goblet traditionally set aside for Elijah crowned a corner by my uncle’s place.

  How to explain this first night of Passover? Words and faces of relief? Of giddy joy? Sadness for those now departed? We took our places linked by a shared aura of preparation. Uncle, as always, was our guide through the ritual. For although Passover is at its center a festival of remembrance, a re-telling of the story of how God brought the Jews out of bondage, it also has a hidden core. Inside the body of Torah, folded like a phoenix in its egg, is the story of the spiritual journey each of us can make, from slavery to sanctity. The Passover Haggadah is a golden bell whose singing tones tell us: always remember that the Holy Land is in you!

  To begin, my mother lit a candle at the hearth, then set flames dancing up and down the tiny steps of candelabra at each end of our table. The present and past were linked. We were the Israelites awaiting Moses at Sinai, just as the table, draped in white, was rendered our altar and the kitchen our temple in the desert.

  It was Uncle then, acting as our leader, who opened the initial, most-sacred gate of holiday by intoning a blessing over the first of four cups of wine we traditionally drink. “Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, creator of the fruit of the vine.” Uncle sang in Hebrew, his gentle voice a tender echo of the trumpet call with which he used to begin our service in the days before Old Christian informants might eavesdrop. After repeating this and the following verses in Portuguese so that Judah—whose Hebrew lessons had fallen behind—would understand, the voices of all those assembled wove together into a single ply of promise and solidarity: “Quem tem fome que venha e coma.TodonecessitadoquevenhaefestejePessá.Esteanoaqui,no próximoemIsrael.Esteanoescravos,no próximohomenslivres.Let all who are hungry come and eat. Let all who are needy come celebrate the Passover with us. This year we are here; next year may we be in the land of Israel. This year we are in bondage; next year may we be free.”

  A bit later, as Uncle began to cut steaming pieces of lamb atop our matzahs, he commented that each letter of the Hebrew alphabet is ruled by an angel and that it is the angels, assembled in our written and spoken words, who work the wonders at which ordinary men are amazed.

  Surely, our prayers and stories had a winged grace that night.

  Yet how fragile angels are; their magic was dispelled in a single moment. Cinfa had gone to open the courtyard door for Elijah, the prophet, whose spirit is said to enter each home during Passover. Ragged shouts from far off came in with the rush of cool air. My master jumped up; the words were in Hebrew. Again, there was a long-journeying shriek. Then silence.

  “What could it be?” my mother asked.

  Uncle was pale. “Nothing,” he said absently, as if he were entranced by a vision. And for the rest of the meal he wouldn’t utter a sound except to conclude the ceremony. “Next year in Jerusalem,” were the words of eternal homecoming with which we concluded, but they fell hollow between us.

  The next day, at cockcrow, a scroll was left mysteriously at our courtyard door giving us the answer to my mother’s question. In New Christian code, it read: Sixteen swallows failed to mark their nests last night and were taken by Pharaoh. Your bird, Reza, was amongst them.

  As it turned out, my cousin Reza, along with all the other guests at her clandestine seder, had been arrested the evening before and carted off to the municipal prison. Someone must have informed on them. Had Uncle witnessed this through a mystical window or only guessed that something terrible was happening?

  As I read the note that dawn, my mother said, “Esther and Uncle have gone to call on the New Christian aristocrats who serve at court. They’re hoping that one of them will see fit to help.”

  It was the Sabbath, the day before the second holy night of Passover, and I was terribly pious in those days, so I resolved to do my part in hastening Reza’s release by chanting all morning and afternoon. Yet it was to no effect; just before sunset, my aunt and uncle returned home dusty an
d disheartened. “One of the court Jews will try to intervene,” my master said without conviction, scratching his scalp angrily. “All the others…they drip tears and mouth false words.”

  The next evening, totally disheartened by Reza’s continued imprisonment, Uncle came to me in our cellar and mentioned for the first time the possibility of our leaving Portugal. “If I asked you to leave this country forever, would you go?” he asked.

  “Yes, if I had to,” I replied.

  “Good. But your mother…could she leave?”

  “She’s frightened. An enemy one knows is often easier to bear than one who is unknown.”

  “True. And if your mother doesn’t leave, I doubt Esther would. Nor Reza, now that she’s married and trying to start a family. If we can just get her home.”

  “Is that why you’ve been doubly upset? You want to leave? But if you demanded that…”

  Uncle waved away my questions, began to chant Queen Esther’s prayer, verses of special meaning to us because she, too, had been forced to hide her Judaism: “Help me who has no helper except the Lord. For I am taking my life in my hands…”

  His own hands had formed white-knuckled fists and his lips were trembling. Jumping up, I reached for his shoulders. His eyes gushed with tears. Poor Uncle, I thought, Portugal is driving him to the limits of his body’s tolerance. “The Jewish courtiers will effect Reza’s release,” I said. “Then, if you want to, we will make plans to leave. Somehow, we’ll convince everyone. But now you must rest. Come, I’ll take you upstairs. You may lean on me until we are out of the wilderness.”

  “Let us stay here,” he said. “Please.” Nodding his acceptance of my aid, he said, “Lead me to the mat. The atmosphere of prayer helps me.”

  We sat together in silence as he wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his robe. When he laid his hand on my head, he said in a breaking voice, “Where is the vellum ribbon with both our names on it which I gave you?”