The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon sc-1
Page 25
It is near midnight when Gemila finally wakes. She sits up, gazes with motherly benevolence at Menachim asleep by her side. She starts as she sees me. “Beri, what are you doing here?” she asks.
“You don’t remember?” I ask.
“No. What…what do you mean?”
An eclipse seems to fall over my heart; the demon’s knowledge of the murderers identity must be gone.
Senhora Faiam rushes to the bed. “A dream from the Other Side, dear,” she says, caressing Gemila’s cheek. “You were having a nightmare and I asked Beri to come to see you.”
“Yes,” she says, recalling its fringes inside a faraway look. “A dream.”
Bento presses his lips into his wife’s hands. “It doesn’t matter now.”
She turns to me, confused. “But you…you were in the dream,” she says. “I was being swept away by a river of blood. Like the Nile after Moses touched his… It was cold…so cold.” She speaks carefully, as if stepping back into her nightmare. “And you and your uncle were on the shore calling to me. But you were both birds…ibises. And then you were squawking something fierce. Flapping your wings. I was caught in the current, hitting the rocks. And then I, too, was an ibis. I was flying onto the bank, into your arms.” She stares off into memory. She shrugs, offers me an apologetic smile. “It’s gone. That’s all I remember.”
“The important thing is that it’s over,” I say.
Senhora Faiam kisses my hands. “I’ll never be able to repay you,” she says.
“I have been repaid already,” I say. But my words are false, and are returned to me hollow. The cavern of my uncle’s death has opened before me again. Every step I take from now on will be a descent. Father Carlos takes my arm. “Come, we must talk of Judah now,” he says.
Is he relieved that the girl could not name him as the murderer? “Yes, let us talk,” I answer dryly.
Gemila calls my name as we reach the threshold of her doorway. “Beri, I saw one other thing in my dream,” she says. “A white creature with a human face. Part vulture, perhaps. But with two mouths, the one below closed tight and fringed by blood. Like the demon Maimon, I think. When you were calling to me from the shore, he was ripping at you and your uncle with his talons. And Berekiah, Maimon had come out of your house, out of the entrance to your store. I was not in a river. I was peering over my wall at Temple Street. Its cobbles were flowing with blood, and I was cursing God for having made it so!”
Chapter XIV
Carlos and I stand outside Senhora Faiam’s house. The recent sins of Lisbon lie dormant for now, veiled by the dark grace of the seventh evening of Passover. Craving human warmth but unwilling to unveil my vulnerability to a man who might have helped murder Uncle, I tug on one of the bell sleeves of his long cassock and say, “Tell me about Judah. I need to know everything.”
“He…he was taken. By a group of Old Christians. On Sunday.”
“Is there any chance that he’s safe…that he’s alive?”
“I’d like to think so. But…” The priests brings his palms together into a pose of Christian prayer. “I took him to St. Peter’s when the killing started. We hid together below, in the vault. You’ve been there. Where the relics are. Many New Christians were there. But men came. And they started…” Carlos grimaces, and his voice, having darted between us as if on windblown flame, is extinguished by a gust of horror. He takes my hands, places my fingers over his eyes, inhales as if bathing his soul in the reviving scent of myrtle. He lets my hands drop. “The boy and I slipped out the exit to the courtyard, made our way down to the Tagus,” he continues. “Moses Jagos and his family, they joined us. He had the idea to hire a boat to get across to the other side of the river, to Barreiro. He took out gold sovereigns from the lining of his cap. A boatman agreed. But as we were leaving, more Old Christians came. They…they took Judah and the others. I tried to fight. You must believe me. But they threw me in the river. By the time…” He cringes, hugs himself as if he’s suddenly frigid.
I shake him. “Just tell me now where they took my brother! Was it to the pyres in the Rossio?!”
“I don’t know. Oh God, I…I don’t know. At first, toward the Ribeira Palace. I ran after them. I was going to get Judah back no matter what. That boy…that beautiful boy. Berekiah, your beautiful brother… You know the Boatmen’s Tavern beyond the Misericordia Church? I found them outside there. Judah saw me. He smiled and stuck his tongue out like he was expecting a present. Can you believe it? What must he have been thinking? I ran up to the Dominican in charge. ‘You’ve taken an Old Christian by mistake,’ I told him. I pointed to Judah. ‘That boy. He’s my ward. He’s not a Jew’
“‘God makes no mistakes,’ the friar said. He was like Herod, this Old Christian. Swathed in a kind of lunatic power. He ordered Judah stripped. The men laughed at the boy’s circumcised sex. But he wasn’t crying. He looked like your uncle. Staring at me from behind a kind of sworn silence, as if to say that everything was going as planned. Master Abraham and Judah… I don’t understand.” Carlos gasps, turns away toward a memory which clenches his breathing.
“Then you know about Uncle. How?!”
“Cinfa told me, of course. Before I joined you in Senhora Faiam’s house. She told me about Master Abraham, mentioned what you were doing.” He draws near to me, whispers conspiratorially: “They violated me, Berekiah. They were drunk. I was held down to the rocks at the river’s edge while they… It was their laughter I couldn’t take. When I was able to stand, I rushed to the Rossio. But Judah, he was nowhere to be found.”
“Why didn’t you come sooner to tell us?”
“I was frightened. I was hurt. My bones ached with the wine smell of them…the smoke. I ran for sanctuary in the Carmelite monastery. Berekiah, I’m not a courageous man. Look at these robes, these idols…” He lifts from his chest his crucifix, rips at it till the clasp breaks. “Look at this traitorous wood that burns into me!” His straining, clawed hands separate the Nazarene from the cross with a snap. Jesus, contorted and stiff, drops as a crippled Jew to the cobbles. Animal grunts rise from Carlos’ gut, and he hurls the denuded cross against the whitewashed wall of my house. Becalmed, panting, he surveys the roofs above us, the black mirror of river below. “On Monday,” he whispers, “I tried to find him. I even slipped into the lion’s den of São Domingos. Berekiah, for the first time in nine years, I wasn’t afraid of Christians. Maybe that’s what Judah felt. But how? A little boy can’t feel such things. I even thought that perhaps he’d simply walk right back here. That somehow…”
Hope is strange; it defies all odds. As Carlos continued speaking, I began thinking: Then it is still not certain that Judah is dead. Somewhere he is hiding in a protected corner. I ask Carlos, “Why should I believe what you’ve told me?”
“What are you talking about?” he asks.
“Have you proof of where you were these past days?”
“You mean you suspect me?!”
“I suspect everyone until the Messiah comes,” I say.
He sighs as if ceding to a truth he had long refused to admit. “You can ask the Carmelite nuns.”
I decide to test him by pointing the blame toward Simon. I say, “A silk thread was found under Uncle’s thumbnail. Black silk…like a filament from one of Simon’s gloves.”
“Simon? You mean…?”
“Yes. Why not him?”
“Dear Berekiah, I think so much death has got you reading from left to right. Simon loved your uncle. He would never have raised a hand against him.”
“But they might have had a bitter argument in the threshing group,” I observe.
The priest waves my suggestion away. “An argument over Talmud and Torah may carry one along a path of burning words but will never lead to blood. You should know that by now.”
Carlos has passed this little test. But what if he suspects that I know the thread was planted, wouldn’t he then react in just this way? “And have you told my mother about Judah?” I ask.
An absurd laugh comes from me. “Carlos, you never cease to amaze me. Who isn’t dead might be easier to answer just now!”
“Dom João Mascarenhas,” he says.
I nod. “Yes, of course.” Dom João ran the port and customs house for the King, was the Court Jew who ransomed Reza from Limoeiro Prison with gold the previous Sunday. The Old Christians always resented the idea of a New Christian growing wealthy from taxes on their merchandise, and he was the most hated of our compatriots. “How did it happen?” I ask.
“How? Like everyone else. A mob came to his house. Ripped the gates down. He escaped across the rooftops of Little Jerusalem. Imagine, fleeing like a common Jew. Made it to…”
“Carlos, I can’t believe you don’t get it!” I shout. “To them, we’ve all got horns and tails. Every last one of us. No matter whether we drop gold leaf into our soup or only egg yolk!”
A prayer for Dom João’s soul unites our voices. “Enough religious duty,” I say. “Questions… First, do you know the identity of those who helped Uncle smuggle Hebrew books from Portugal?”
Carlos shakes his head.
“Have you no suspicions?” I ask.
“None. Unless it was one of the other threshers. Master Abraham said it was better for no one to know. In case we were caught.”
“Then that leaves Diego…Simon and Samson are dead. Did Uncle say…”
“Dead?!” Carlos interrupts. “But you just said that you suspected Simon!”
“No, they’re dead. I was…was testing you.”
“Berekiah, I need to know the truth. Are my brothers in kabbalah dead or alive? Tell me now!”
“Simon’s landlord said he was dragged away by the mob and turned to ash. Samson’s father-in-law told me that he saw him captured by the mob.”
Father Carlos’ shoulders sag. He reaches up to rub his eyes. I ask, “Did Uncle say anything to you about Haman…or mention anything strange about Diego?”
“Not Diego, too?!” he replies. “You believe that he could have been involved in…”
“Uncle was killed with a shohet’s blade. By someone who knew the location of our trap door and genizah. It could have only been a thresher. Or one of Uncle’s secret smugglers, assuming that they, too, had been entrusted with my master’s secrets.”
“And what’s this about Haman?” the priest asks.
“Uncle’s last Haggadah was stolen. I believe he had modeled the face of Haman upon the smuggler who was betraying him…or whom he suspected of betrayal.”
“He made no mention of it to me,” Carlos says.
“Did he speak ill of anyone of late?”
“No, no one.”
“Had Diego been fully inducted into the threshing group?” I ask.
“You mean, did he know of the existence of the genizah?”
“Yes, and the secret passage from our cellar to the micvah.”
“You found out! How? Or did you already know of it?”
“It would take too long to explain, Carlos. Another death led me to it. Just tell me if Diego knew about it,” I plead.
“Not that I know of,” he replies.
“And the genizah?”
“No. Master Abraham made it quite clear we were not to discuss such matters with him for the time being.”
Then it was nigh impossible that Diego had held the shohet’s blade. And so, if Father Carlos were telling the truth, all the threshers were innocent. The murderer could only be one or more of Uncle’s secret smugglers. I ask, “Did you use the secret passageway often?”
“Hardly ever,” the priest replies.
“Good,” I comment.
“Why, ‘good?’”
“That might explain why the killer didn’t know beforehand that he couldn’t make it through. The tunnel thins. I could barely make it. Anyone larger… So he must have rushed back into the cellar and when he heard me calling from upstairs, hid in the genizah. Then, when I went to the courtyard for nails with which to seal the trap door shut, he crept upstairs and left the house through our store—Gemila saw him on Temple Street, cursed the Lord and thereby opened herself up to the invasion of an ibbur. The killer must have had a demonic appearance. White Maimon of the Two Mouths,’ she called him. He probably had a very light complexion. Might have been cowled. Or maybe he wore a concealing hat whose chin strap looked like another mouth to her.” I take the priest’s shoulder. “Carlos, I must check my uncle’s correspondence to see if he named his smugglers. And there’s a drawing I want to show you. Of a boy who tried to sell the stolen Haggadah. But we need more light.”
I’m about to continue up the street toward our gate, but Father Carlos grabs my arm. “So who do you suppose might have had the courage to smuggle books with your uncle?”
“Don’t know. But we probably know him. Maybe they even feigned dislike.”
With those words, a perverse thought comes to me. Who was it, aside from King Manuel and certain Christian clerics, whom Uncle despised most in this world? Dear old Rabbi Losa! But what if that antagonism was a show? With his burgeoning business as an official outfitter of the clergy, Losa travelled anywhere he wanted, would have been able to shepherd Hebrew manuscripts to safety. I ask the priest, “Did Uncle ever mention Rabbi Losa in the threshing meetings?”
“Only rarely. And usually with contempt.”
“Carlos, would you come with me to Losa’s house, now? The correspondence can wait a little longer. For some perverse reason I cannot fathom, the rabbi always liked you. And I very much need to talk with him.”
“He likes me because I’m as frightened as he is,” Carlos observes. “We occasionally enjoy trembling together.”
As the priest and I head off to the rabbi’s house, he asks in a cowering voice, “So do you forgive me?”
“Forgive you?” I ask.
“For not protecting Judah. I need to know.”
“Of course I forgive you. You are as much a victim as… Look, Carlos, I’m not sure if I’m Jewish anymore, but I’m no Christian Inquisitor either.”
“Not Jewish?! Berekiah, you have to believe in something!”
“Oh, do I? Do I really?!”
“Of course.”
I stop walking. Deep into my belly and up through my chest I inhale the night scents from the thick wilderness surrounding this pitiful settlement called Lisbon. I say, “Breathe in that darkness, Carlos. Something new is out there between the odor of shit and smoke and forest. A new landscape is forming, a secular countryside that will give us sanctuary from the burning shores of religion. We’ve only gotten a whiff of it so far. But it’s coming. And nothing the Old Christians can do can keep it from giving us refuge.”
Carlos answers with a preacherly, skeptical voice: “Pray tell me, dear Berekiah, what will this new landscape have as a foundation if not religion?”
“I haven’t got a clue, Carlos. The landscape hasn’t condensed yet. There’ll be mystics and skeptics, of that I have no doubt. But neither priests nor friars, nor deacons nor bishops nor Popes will find a home there. If they take one step on our land, we’ll throw them right out on their heads. And no didactic rabbis, either. The minute you unfurl your scroll of commandments, we’ll slit your throat!”
“You should beg for God’s forgiveness for that,” Carlos warns me.
“Go sing it to the goats! I’m through begging! My God grants neither forgiveness nor punishment.”
“Ein Sof?” the priest asks, referencing the kabbalistic concept of an unknowable God without any recognizable attributes. When I nod, he adds: “There’s little comfort in a God beyond everything.”
“Ah, comfort… For that, my dear friend, I want a wife to lie with at night and children to hug, not God. You can keep the Lord written on the pages of the Ol
d and New Testaments for yourself. I’ll take the one who’s unwritten.”
Carlos shakes his head as if to consign me to a world he’ll never understand. We’ve reached Rabbi Losa’s house. I wait around the corner. In response to the priest’s knocks, Losa’s teenage daughter Esther-Maria opens an upstairs shutter, brushes tangled hair from weary eyes.
“Sorry to wake you. Your father home?” Carlos asks.
“Out,” she answers.
“Where?”
“Don’t know.”
“Will you tell him that I want to talk with him? I’ll be at Pedro Zarco’s house or St. Peter’s. Tell him to come as soon as he can. Even if he has to wake us. And tell him that we mean him no harm.”
She nods. The priest and I trudge back home, sit in the courtyard. Guilt at our being left alive pervades us both like a morbid melody. I slip inside for an oil lamp, bring it back out, unscroll my drawing of the lad who tried to sell Uncle’s last Haggadah to Senhora Tamara. Shining a circle of light upon the sketch, I ask, “Have you seen him before?”
Carlos holds the drawing right up to his face. “No,” he replies. As I take my drawing back, he asks in a hopeful voice, “May I stay here till morning? I can’t be alone.”
“We’ve got no other choice. You mustn’t go near your apartment or St. Peter’s. A henchman, a blond Northerner, has been sent by the murderer to kill Diego. He may be after you, too.”
“Me?!” The priest starts and his lazy eyes open as if he’s swallowed poison. “Then maybe that explains…” He takes from his cape a square of vellum with tufts of yard sewn at the corners like tzitzit. It looks like a child’s toy. “Read,” he says, holding it out to me.
A crude figure of a man is outlined with miniature Hebrew lettering, each character no bigger than an ant. The language used is a curious mixture of Hebrew and Portuguese, and the words are from the book of Job: She abandons her eggs to the ground, letting them be kept warm by the sand. She forgets that a foot may crush them, or a wild beast trample on them.