Farid rushed from the stairs and folded his arm protectively around Esther’s waist. As he steered her away, she turned, stared at me over her shoulder as if to say goodbye before a long voyage. With Farid following closely behind her, she carried herself up the stairs with a ghostly grace.
Although its exact route is hidden to us, the pathway between sadness and insight must be paved carefully by God; I suddenly realized that the killer, who had been intimately familiar with the contents of our storage cabinet, would also probably have known of our genizah!
Taking a key from inside the eel bladder hanging behind the Bleeding Mirror, I lifted the rim of our prayer mat skirting the north wall and peeled away a piece of slate to reveal a lock. Half a circle to the right I turned. At the sound of a click, I lifted a wooden lid flanking the wall, three feet by four, camouflaged with slate. Our genizah opened with a groan of protest.
I’d been right; smudges of blood stained the top two manuscripts: the “Fox Fables” which I was illustrating and the Book of Esther which my aunt was lettering. Below, for the most part clean, but still tainted here and there with the red finger-shadows of the killer, were family Torahs, Haggadahs and prayer books; a map of the Mediterranean by Judah Abenzara; religious commentaries by Uncle’s friend Abraham Sabah; poetic works by Farid ud-din Attar; and two mystical guidebooks by Abraham Abulafia—our spiritual father—which my master had not yet summoned the courage to entrust to his secret smugglers. Below these, seemingly untouched, there rested a Torah illuminated with magical beasts bequeathed to my master by his late friend, Isaac Bracarense; a Koran from Persia; three piles of my master’s personal correspondence; our woolen sack of coinage, still heavy with copper and silver; and finally, the marriage contract between my aunt and uncle, scripted by one and illustrated by the other.
I locked everything below the genizah door.
It seemed clear to me that the killer had stopped his search before reaching the lower manuscripts; they were unstained. And if he had continued that far, surely he would have taken our money.
The only work missing opened the petals of a new mystery: it was the Haggadah Uncle had been completing just before his death. For all the daring of its knotted patterns and bird-headed letters, it was worth nothing in comparison to the Abulafia manuscripts, portions of which were centuries old and in the master’s own hand.
So my uncle’s Haggadah must have possessed a hidden value to the killer.
That certainty gifted me with another, and I turned around so that I could face our desks: the killer had found the key to the genizah in the eel bladder hidden behind the Bleeding Mirror. This was confirmation that a member of the threshing group was involved. But why had the genizah been re-locked? Out of a simple desire for order?
Seeking a power to enhance my own, I took out Uncle’s ibis ring from my pouch and slipped it on my right index finger.
Farid had returned to the cellar now, was standing between the bodies, staring at the lips of crusted blood peeling away from my uncle’s neck. He began wavering as if foundationless. When he looked at me, something he saw… His eyes rolled back in his head to show a sickly white. His body melted. I jumped up and reached out to break his fall. I held him till he awoke.
Cinfa stood on the landing now. The girl’s eyes, like Torah pointers, were fixed on Uncle. Her hands gripped the hair at the back of her neck. Liquid was dripping down the legs of her pants.
Afraid that she wouldn’t be able to cope with death viewed from any closer, I shouted, “Go up the stairs and guard the door! Let no one down!”
She did as I said. Farid was waking now, and I began to blot his brow with my sleeve. He sat up. “I’m okay,” he signalled. “It was suddenly too much to bear. And something I saw…”
“What?”
“On your uncle’s right thigh…” Farid clasped his hands together and took a deep breath.
“What?!” I demanded.
“Semente branca.” Farid used the kabbalist’s term, white seed, for semen.
“What are you talking about?”
“Come,” he signalled. We crouched together. There, on Uncle’s inner thigh, in between smearings of blood, were patches of crust, like bits of mica.
“That could be anything!” I gestured wildly. “Spilled honey, almond milk. Uncle didn’t pay attention to…”
“It’s semente branca,” Farid repeated with an impatient, downward thrust to his gestures. “I sniffed it and…” Before I could stop him, he peeled a tiny piece free and placed it on his tongue. He tasted it as one might sample a new spice. Gagging suddenly, he spit it back into his hand, wiped it on his pants. “They had just made love,” he signalled with definitive gestures.
It wasn’t shock that Uncle could couple with someone other than Aunt Esther that made me gasp. But that he had brought a lover to his prayer cellar, our synagogue… It was impossible. It changed everything. And yet…
“Listen, I need your help,” I gestured to Farid, realizing that we had reached the appointed time when I needed to count on his singular talents. I pulled the prayer rug off the girl and told him what I already knew and suspected, showed him the note Uncle had written to Dom Miguel Ribeiro, the nobleman for whom Aunt Esther had scripted a Book of Psalms. When he finished reading, I grasped his powerful hands and placed them flat against my chest so he could feel my heartbeat. I signalled, “Farid, I’ve been thinking that God may have brought us together for just this Passover. Perhaps he needs us to find Uncle’s killer together. I must go look for Judah soon. But for now, I want you to walk around this room, gift your gaze to every form and shadow and tell me if you spot anything I haven’t. Anything! You must give me your interpretation of what happened.”
Farid did as I said. And when he was ready to tell me what he’d found, he motioned me to follow him to Uncle. We crouched by his head. When will we be able to bury him? I suddenly wondered, recalling with a jolt that we had to see him safely into sanctified ground as soon as possible.
“There is a slight slope to the slit across his throat,” Farid signalled. “I’d say that the killer twisted your uncle’s head to the left from behind, and with a razor-sharp knife in his right hand…” Farid tugged his arm across his chest to indicate the motion that must have ended my master’s life.
He stood up, walked over to the girl, crouched by her hands, leaned over and sniffed at them eagerly, puffing like a dog. Looking up at me, he signalled, “She worked with olive oil and rosemary. Something else that’s almost disappeared, possibly lemon oil.” He touched her thumb with the tip of his index finger. “There’s some ash there. I’d guess she was a baker. The ash may come from the ovens.”
I nodded my agreement; I would be a greater fool than I am to discount Farid’s nose or eyes.
“And look at her right temple,” he gestured. “There’s a small circular indentation there. One on the left as well.”
“What do you think they are?”
“I’ve no idea. But the symmetry is most unusual. Now follow me.” He led me to the leather hanging on the western wall where the knife had been cleaned. Lifting its fringe over his head, he showed me five slashing strokes of blood coming to a sudden end at a clean edge of tile. It was as if a hand with fingertips but no palm had been wiped there.
Was the killer a being able to disappear by fingerpainting arcane symbols in blood? Had one of the threshers summoned a demon or ghost to slay my master? Could such a creature from the Other Side have gotten past the mezuzah on our doorframe?
“What do you make of it?” Farid asked with anxious gestures. When I shook my head, he dropped the hanging back into place and signalled, “Now give me the rosary bead and the thread.”
I took them from my pouch and handed them over.
He sniffed and licked at them. “The bead is carob wood, well polished. Expensive. Made locally, I’d say. But it does not belong to Father Carlos. At least, its not from the rosary of his with which I’m familiar. The thread, as you know, is sil
k. Very fine quality. I would have to see Simon’s gloves to know if it’s a match. And even then… There must be more miles of black silk in Lisbon than paved streets.” He let his hands fall to his sides.
“Nothing more?” I asked.
“Just that you were right about your uncle being murdered while still wearing his clothes. Inside his robe, there are stains from excrement and from semente branca.”
It was as if my masters body had released all its fluids. Perhaps, at the moment of a violent death, the body seeks to cleanse itself so the soul can depart quickly to God.
“Is that it?” I asked. When he nodded, I signalled, “Then how do you think he escaped? I know for certain the door was bolted firmly from the inside. He’d have had to pass through the cellar walls. There was no way…”
“Only one very poor thought has sought to dispel my ignorance,” he gestured.
“Which is?”
Farid pointed up to the window eyelets. There were three, oval in shape, and each no longer than ten inches and no wider than a man’s hand. They were covered by tiny shutters which could be locked and highly polished hide flaps which allowed only a dim light to enter the room.
I signalled, “Not even a child or dwarf could slip through one of those. Unless the killer was a mink or viper…”
“I told you it was a pauper of an idea.” Farid shrugged, held his thumb and forefinger to his lips, then swirled them upward in a graceful arc. He meant that we had to wait for Allah to give us an answer.
“Can’t wait for Him,” I replied. Walking to the stairs, I sat to consider the mystery. I thought: How strange that I feel nothing but a vague emptiness and weakness of body. It was as if my love had died with Uncle. As if—cut loose from my past and present—I were floating free of everything but an unstoppable need to find the killer.
Suddenly, my heart seemed to leap against my chest; someone was scratching at one of the shutters over the eyelets we were just discussing. I ran up the cellar stairs, dashed through the kitchen to the courtyard. And found Roseta smacking her paw against a ball of vermilion wool which Uncle had recently made for her. She was all wet, looked like she’d been tossed in a well.
“You soulless idiot!” I hissed at her.
I took a long deep breath, apologized to her and walked out our gate to the street. To the east, about a hundred paces down the Rua de Sao Pedro, Dr. Montesinhos’ body was still hanging in the doorway to our old schoolhouse. A small man in a long violet cape stood before him, was raising his right hand to offer a blessing. I could see him only in profile, but he had my master’s wild gray hair and cinnamon complexion.
It’s Uncle! I suddenly thought, as if all my previous conclusions about his death had been sheer idiocy. Of course, he’s used magic to fool us all!
It was insanity, I know, but relief swept through me, and I started to advance toward him. I may even have begun laughing. On hearing my approaching footsteps, however, the small dark man turned toward me, froze, then bolted around the corner toward the back of the Church of São Miguel. By the time I reached there, he was gone from sight.
Desperately confused, I trudged back to Dr. Montesinhos’ body. The gold sovereign which had been placed in his mouth to pay for his heavenly ferry across the Jordan River was missing. With a jolt like that which comes after jumping from a high wall, I thought: The man in the violet cape was not my uncle, had reached up not to bless the body but to steal the coin. He had been just a common thief.
On walking back home, I was pervaded by the sensation that history had taken off on an errant path unforeseen by God Himself. All of us in Lisbon—Jew and Christian alike—were now dependent only on ourselves for survival. It was then that a chilling thought came to me which I never imagined would ever penetrate my mind: There never was any God watching over us! Even at its kabbalistic core, the Torah is simply fiction. There is no covenant. I have dedicated my whole life to a lie.
On descending into the cellar, I sat again on the bottom step of the stairs and hid my head in my hands. Farid came to my side, rested his hand atop my head. “We’re all doubting God right now,” he signalled. “Do not think about the greater troubles which we all have. We have a murder before us. Let us return to that. Now, what special value might your uncle’s missing Haggadah have had to the killer?”
I reminded Farid that my master had always modeled the faces of his Biblical characters on famous Lisboners, neighbors and friends—including his beloved colleagues in the threshing group. Always, he attempted to match them to characters possessing their own predilections and interests, of course.
“Had any of the threshers just been illuminated as an evil man?” Farid gestured.
“No,” I signalled back. “I don’t think he suspected any of them. Or had only learned very recently of the treachery against him. Probably, he wouldn’t have gone back and re-illuminated their panels. It would have been simply too much labor for results…” I stopped in mid-sentence; everything was falling into place. Last Friday, just before our Passover seder, Uncle had told me that he’d found the face of Haman for his latest manuscript. In his voice, sadness and relief had woven together. Now, to Farid, I gestured that he must have discovered the perpetrators of some sort of plot against him that very day. I signalled, “And I think that he used the face of his principal enemy for the villain Haman…the face of the man who would kill him. It’s the only possibility. And that’s why his last Haggadah was stolen. The murderer knew of his characterization. Or suspected it. Or even accidentally came across it as he paged greedily through the manuscripts in the genizah. He panicked, took it with him. That’s why he didn’t leave blood stains on the bottom manuscripts or take our coins.”
Farid tugged on his ear lobe, looked down at me gravely over his broad nose. “We must consider each of the threshers in turn,” he signalled. “Father Carlos, what could have been his motivation? Could he have been Haman?”
“Uncle and he had argued about a safira of Solomon Ibn Gabirol’s which Carlos had refused to give up.”
“And Samson Tijolo? Had Uncle spoken of him lately?”
“Just before I went to his house to buy wine, Uncle told me that he wished to talk to him, gave me a note for him.”
“What was the subject he wanted to discuss?”
“Don’t know,” I gestured. “But there’s another thing. They only ever saw each other for threshing meetings. Was it simply the distance between our houses? I wondered about that sometimes.”
“A spark of dislike?”
“More like rivalry. Two intelligent, powerful kabbalists. Competition may exist even amongst the angels.”
“And then there’s Diego,” Farid gestured.
Diego had not yet completed his initiation into the threshing group. I replied, “I don’t know if he’d been informed yet of the secret genizah.”
“You could find that out from one of the other threshers.”
I took out the note fallen from Diego’s turban, showed it to Farid and explained how it had come into my possession. “What do you make of it?” I asked.
“Madre is mother, of course, particularly when used to discuss Our Lady. So I would say that it seems to be a half-Jewish, half-Christian talisman—a prayer to the Virgin for something good to happen to an Isaac on the twenty-ninth.” He handed it back. “Very strange things you Anusim are making of late. You’re like sphinxes with Jewish hearts and Christian heads.”
“There’s another thing, Farid. Diego was injured at the time. After being stoned and chased, could he have mustered the strength to slit two throats?”
“If he felt he’d had to; Diego is a survivor, fled Castile with the Inquisitors salivating over his imminent capture. His injury would be the best of excuses should anyone begin to suspect him.”
“But he lives blocks away. Would he have risked setting sail through a sea of Old Christians to reach us? Unlikely.”
“If, however, he had combined skills with Eurico Damas…”
“Or with Rabbi Losa,” I noted. “He always hated Uncle. And he deals in religious garments, undoubtedly rosaries as well.”
Farid breathed deeply. “And lastly there’s Dom Miguel Ribeiro,” he gestured.
“I think he’d gone to Dom Miguel for funds to purchase a very valuable manuscript. A book that may have provoked an argument in the threshing group. This time, Uncle’s need to save every last page of Hebrew from destruction may have gotten him killed.”
“The girls husband,” Farid signalled. “What about him?” He caught my hands to stifle my protest. “I realize that it’s almost impossible that she and Uncle had been lovers,” he gestured. “But not everyone is blessed with your faith. Perhaps her husband had been convinced she was giving him the sharp horns of a cuckold. She might have come to Uncle for help of some sort, to ask a religious question. The husband could have tracked her under the mistaken assumption that whomever she was meeting was a secret lover. After watching her disappear through the trap door, he burst in and leapt upon Uncle. He took his own wife’s clothing so she couldn’t be traced to him.”
“An obsessively jealous husband, mistrustful, faithless, prone to rage.”
“Lisbon is up to its towers in such vermin. How many men do we both know who do not understand the way of love?”
“But he would have had to realize that his wife’s very face would give him away. Taking the clothes would be an absurd gesture.”
“Unless they possessed a hidden value,” Farid signalled. “A jewel or a letter of credit. Beri, there’s one more possibility.” Farid licked his lips nervously.
“Who?”
“Like amateur beekeepers around an angry hive, we are avoiding the topic of Esther.” He waved away my protests. “No one we know is more prone to rage than her, right or wrong?” he demanded.
I nodded.
The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon Page 11