The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon

by Richard Zimler

  “I don’t understand,” I say.

  My aunt reaches to her temples, rubs them as if trying to center scattering thoughts. Cinfa twists to gaze up at her, then bolts out of the house. Esther calls after her in vain.

  Afonso’s expression becomes one of gentle compassion as he whispers to Esther in Persian. His protective arm circles her shoulders. He hugs her to him. To me, he says in a dry voice, “Just give your aunt some time. Try to understand that the journey is far more complex than you once thought.”

  He leads Esther into the courtyard. Huddling together, they disappear through the gate. Jealousy, thick and hot as pitch, sluices through my chest; cruel is the knowledge that a virtual stranger could revive my aunt when I could do nothing.

  And that she would abandon her family at this time—it seems impossible!

  Dom Afonso…does his presence change everything? Could he have been involved in Uncle’s murder, in smuggling his books? But he moved from Lisbon prior to the forced conversion, long before my master and my father dug the genizah.

  An absurd disappointment buries itself in my gut, is linked to the knowledge that life is not a book, does not hold margin notes explaining difficult events. If it were, Dom Afonso would have remained seated in front of his fireplace in Tomar. His arrival only serves to complicate what is already out of my control.

  I hear my uncle say: dearest Berekiah, life presents us with many paths leading nowhere, doors opening upon sheer drops, staircases rising to locked gates. And I remember that he used to tell me that all life is a pilgrimage to the Sabbath. Even if it is, I think, then nearly all of us take the most circuitous routes trying to get there.

  I plod back to Farid. “People are very odd creatures,” I comment.

  “Why? What happened?”

  When I explain, he signals, “You don’t know, do you?”

  “Know what?” I ask.

  “They were lovers long ago. Samir told me.”

  “Are you crazy, Afonso and…”

  “It all ended years ago. It means nothing.”

  His words are too simple to understand. The floor grows moist, slides away like sluicing floodwaters. Farid’s gesturing hands anchor me in a spinning world.

  Could Esther have been involved in Uncle’s murder after all? Maybe in passing she divulged to Dom Afonso the existence of our genizah. He could have acted on his own out of continuing passion for her.

  Farid senses my thoughts, signals, “A house of cards on a slanted table in a sandstorm.”

  “Not if she didn’t know about Dom Afonso’s plans. Perhaps he hid his scheming from her. Even now, she doesn’t suspect that the man giving her solace is her husband’s murderer!”

  “But from Tu Bisvat’s letter, we know that one of Uncle’s smugglers was very likely to have been involved. Unless you can believe that Afonso was one of them…that he was Zerubbabel.”

  Farid and I sit in an expanding silence for quite some time; I am still awe-struck by Esther’s departure. My friend signals to me from time to time, but I pay no attention until he grabs my arm. “Someone with a strange walk has entered the house,” he gestures. “I can feel the vibrations.”

  A man calls my name suddenly from the kitchen. I rush in. The “dead” thresher and fabric importer Simon Eanes stands in the doorway, leaning heavily on his crutches, his time-worn mantle of charcoal velvet draped over his shoulders. He hasn’t shaved or bathed, and a large scab centers his forehead like a wounded eye. Cinfa is with him, is hugging him like an abandoned child. As he caresses his gloved hand across her hair, he offers me a nod of solidarity. “Berekiah, I heard about Master Abraham,” he says.

  Involuntarily, I look at his foot to make sure that it is human. “You’re not dead,” I observe.

  He shakes his head and smiles, a crazy smile, too wide, as if his lips have been pulled apart by a puppeteer working invisible strings.

  The power of shared survival tethers us together, and I step toward him. But his gloves! The one covering his right hand is ripped across its back. Could the silk thread found under Uncle’s thumbnail really have been…. Wary, I hold myself back. He fixes another caricature of a grin on his face.

  “Are you okay?” I ask. “What happened? Your landlord said….”

  “Just fine,” he nods. “I told him to tell anyone enquiring after me that I was dead. It seemed safer at the time. Then I fled Lisbon. I’ve only just gotten back.”

  Dearest God, I think, will Judah, too, return from the dead? Or is that too much to hope for?

  Simon accepts the stale matzah I offer with gracious bows. “Uncle is not the only thresher who died,” I say. “Samson, too.”

  “I know. He had just visited my store. I told him to stay, to hide with me. But he wanted to get back to Rana and their baby. He was grabbed not fifty paces from the doorway…hadn’t a chance with those Christian rioters everywhere.”

  My body seems very distant. I want to try to trick him, but all that emerges from my mouth is the truth. “Diego and Father Carlos made it. And now, Afonso Verdinho is back in Lisbon.”

  Simon nods, grins fleetingly as if he hasn’t heard me and is being polite. We sit opposite each other. Cinfa mumbles to herself about chores to do so that I’ll think she has not been listening to our conversation. My irritated look forces her to skip off into the courtyard.

  A taut smile opens on Simon’s face, seems painted by a talentless illuminator. I ask, “Is something amusing?”

  “No.”

  I point to his forehead. “You’re injured. Were you hit by someone?”

  Simon reaches up to the scab, tells me how he tripped over a tumbrel while hiding in a feather-trimmer’s workshop, laughs while showing more lesions on his knee. Then he tells a silly anecdote about a dog peeing on a false leg he once tried, grins and blinks, grins some more. His eyes dart nervously around the room when silence finally overtakes speech.

  In his grief he has decided to become court jester to a tyrant God.

  “We’re out of wine,” I tell him. “But would you like some brandy? We have some incense from Goa left that might…”

  “No, no. I’m fine.”

  Farid shuffles in, lowers himself next to me. He responds to Simon’s smile with an awkward, probing tilt to his head. When it goes unanswered, my friend signals to me, “He’s like a starving jasmine blooming madly before it dies.”

  More to dispel his false cheer than anything else, I tell Simon of my mother and Aunt Esther and the disappearances of Judah and Samir. He nods as if he’s heard my stories before. To test his reactions, I say, “I found a rosary bead near Uncle’s body. It is my belief that Father Carlos murdered my uncle.”

  “Carlos, but what possible reason could he have for killing Master Abraham?” he asks.

  “They argued over a manuscript that the priest wouldn’t give to Uncle,” I reply.

  Simon smiles as if he’s humoring me, steps his fingers like a spider across the table.

  “Well, what do you say?” I ask angrily.

  “What do you want me to say? I think it’s absurd. But if it’s what you want to believe, then who am I to dispel your illusions? I’m through trying to find the truth. Illusions are fine. We should all be blessed with a garden of flowering lies—it’s much easier to live that way.”

  Cinfa steps back inside. She huddles under Farid’s arm.

  “You shouldn’t listen to me,” Simon suddenly sighs. “I’m an old fool who no longer has any courage. But for Master Abraham’s sake I will try to face the truth, if you like. Now tell me, you believe he was murdered by someone who knew him…a New Christian?” His questioning eyes seem almost hopeful, as if death by a Jew’s hand is preferable to Uncle having been murdered by a follower of the Nazarene.

  “It’s very likely,” I answer. As I explain about the shohet’s blade and our stolen minerals, Simon bites his lip. He glances suggestively at Cinfa until his meaning becomes obvious. I ask the girl to fetch some salvaged fruit from the store for ou
r guest.

  “I understand,” she seethes. “But he was my uncle too!” She glares at me. “I’ll get fruit to help Farid get well. But not because you asked me!”

  When I reach out to her, she twists away and runs out.

  “I don’t know what to do with her,” I confess. “One minute she’s frightened for me, the next…”

  “Time will take care of it,” Simon smiles.

  “You sound like Dom Afonso Verdinho.”

  “Yes, when did he return?”

  “Just rode in,” I say. “Curious isn’t it?”

  “What do you mean? You think that he, too, might have been…”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Tell me more about Master Abraham’s departure from the Lower Realms.”

  In tones that race one step ahead of emotion, I describe to Simon how I found Uncle and the girl, the positions of their bodies, slits on their necks. In response, he grins, but his lips quiver. A battle is being waged for his emotions. Interrupting me suddenly, he says in a pressing tone, “And was there nothing else out of the ordinary on your uncle’s body?”

  My heart beats a code spelling out the words, um fio de seda, a silken thread, but I simply say, “Such as…?”

  Simon shrugs as if to disclaim his coming words. “Semente branca,” he whispers, using the kabbalist’s term, “white seed,” for semen.

  “How did…?” My question is blocked by his upraised hand.

  “In Seville, a member of the Jewish community informed on me. I never found out who it was. The Inquisitors don’t tell the prisoners, of course. I recanted, but they locked me away anyway. Those black marks on your uncle’s neck—they were bruises. I’ve seen them before. From hanging or garroting or…” He looks down as his smile fails. He wipes at his eyes with his shirt sleeve. “The semen emerges as a bodily reaction to pressure on the neck and windpipe,” he continues. “Not in everyone. But it happens. I have a theory that as God approaches to rescue the righteous victim, joy mounts. There is an orgasm. Perhaps even God has an orgasm at that very moment. Your uncle might have known. In any case, the victim faces the Creator as ecstasy ascends to meet pain. As a Master of the Names of God, your uncle would, of course, have reached a very powerful orgasm almost immediately.”

  “You’re saying he was hanged first. But there was no rope, no…”

  “Or garroted, even strangled. With a rope or hands. And…”

  “It was with a rosary,” I interrupt. “I didn’t lie about the bead I found.”

  “And then your shohet slit his throat,” Simon continues. “Out of habit, perhaps. Or to be certain. One can never be too sure with a kabbalist of such magnitude. There are ways…”

  Farid signals, “It would have to be someone he’d allow to get close enough to harm him. Zerubbabel… whoever he is, must have come.”

  Wanting to keep secret my knowledge that one of Uncle’s smugglers may have been involved in his murder, I refrain from translating the last sentence for Simon. He laughs in a single exhale. “A man like me, Farid means.”

  Simon’s fawnlike hesitation has disappeared completely to make way for this new personality of his.

  “Yes,” I say. “Like you.”

  “Berekiah, I’m not going to defend myself. Your uncle ransomed me from Christian death. I would sooner have killed myself than…”

  “And yet we found something that may belong to you,” I say.

  “What?”

  “Give me one of your gloves and I’ll tell you.”

  He shrugs as if ceding to pointlessness, peels the ripped one free and hands it to me. I reach into my pouch and extract the thread. It is a match; the same black silk, not a shade of difference. “It was caught on one of Uncle’s fingernails. It’s yours.”

  After Simon has examined the thread, he pushes up on the table to stand, gives me a sympathetic look. “It may be the same—I’m no expert. But it could have been obtained from my shop, from most any of the silk stores in Little Jerusalem. But of course, you’re wondering just how my glove was ripped.”

  To my nod, he responds in a poetic voice, “When running on one leg, one has a tendency to fall. When falling on stone, one will rip silk. A wonderful material, this fabric of worms, but they who spin it for cocoons do not foresee the idiocy of men.”

  He reaches for his crutches, inserts their leather pads under his arms. My shame at persecuting a man loved by my master mixes with a perverse desire to continue my assault until I have driven every last possibility of happiness from his soul. I say, “Simon, it’s a time of masks. And I don’t really know what’s under yours. Just like you don’t know what’s under mine. For all I know, the man you truly are is patting himself on the back for having fooled me.”

  He hops in order to adjust his crutches. “My old mask was burned long ago in the pyre that consumed my wife. My new one… I don’t even know what it looks like.” He slips on his glove with an air of resignation. “Maybe I did have a terrible fight with your uncle when no one was looking. That’s what would be assumed by an Inquisitor. But is that what you’ve become? A Jewish mystic turned Inquisitor?!” A bitter laugh rises from his gut. “You wouldn’t be the first, would you? Everything is possible in Spain and Portugal. God bless these lands of miracles.”

  Is Simon’s the cynical defense of the world-weary or the sham of a killer? I ask, “Do you know who was smuggling books with Uncle?” When he shakes his head, I say, “Have you no suspicions?”

  “None. I’ve become skilled at not thinking certain thoughts. In fact, not thinking is a special talent one develops in Castile and Andalusia. Go there someday and you will see how valued it is in the good citizens of those hateful provinces.”

  I unscroll for him the drawing of the boy who tried to sell Senhora Tamara my master’s last Haggadah. “Ever see him?”

  “Not that I know of,” he replies.

  “And Tu Bisvat?”

  “What about it?”

  “Not ‘it.’ There’s a man in Constantinople who uses that pen name… who was receiving Uncle’s smuggled manuscripts.”

  Simon shakes his head, says, “There must be a hundred kabbalists in Constantinople. This Tu Bisvat could be any of them. Master Abraham told us not to concern ourselves with these other activities of his. We respected his wishes. Just as you did, dear Berekiah.”

  As he shows me his pitiful grin once again, the desire to slap him burns in my chest. “And Haman?” I ask gruffly.

  “What of him?”

  “Did Uncle tell you whose face was given to Haman in his last Haggadah?”

  Simon shakes his head and walks with his crutches to the door. He turns to me with his hand shading his eyes. The jester has disappeared; he has the vacant look of a man whose hopes have been dashed. He whispers in an urgent voice, “Berekiah, I came to tell you something. A Spanish nobleman staying at the Estaus Palace is asking around town for Hebrew books, illuminated manuscripts in particular. The Sabbath before your Uncle’s death, I was approached about selling some. I don’t know where he got my name. He would not tell me. Beware of all of us if you like. But beware of him in particular. It may be tempting to sell your uncle’s books to raise some money for bribes to escape Portugal. But I don’t trust this man.”

  “And his name?”

  “He calls himself a count, the Count of Almira—but I suspect it’s all a lie.”

  After I explain to Simon and Farid that this is none other than the man who took Diego to the hospital after he was stoned, they both insist on coming with me to talk with him. We walk in silence, and slowly, so that Simon can keep pace on his crutches. All that remains now from the killing are the knowing eyes of the Christians; suspicious, as if marking territory, they inform us that we are not like them. As if we didn’t know that already. Then they begin their whispers and jerk their glances away from us as if we were the living dead. As if we didn’t know that, too.

  In the slanting morning shade of the cathedral’s twin bell towers, Fari
d signals to me that he’s certain a man is tracking us. “Since we left the house,” he gestures. “And he’s a Northerner. But don’t turn just yet.”

  We pick up our pace as we descend past the Magdalena Church into Little Jerusalem. Here, we do not walk so much as navigate past the drying cakes of shit hurled by Christians into the streets. Along the cobbles, brown lines zigzag and fade, bloody trails left by Jewish bodies dragged to the pyre. Flies swirl about, poke into our nostrils, feed from our eyes. My thoughts remain with the Northerner tracking us, however. An invisible cord seems to tie us together, to be tugging me back by my shoulders. By the old schoolhouse, I glance behind. Our stalker is striding past pushcarts of dried fish. He’s the blond giant whom I saw waiting outside Diego’s apartment, I’m sure of it.

  Is he White Maimon of the Two Mouths because of his pale complexion?

  I take Simon’s arm, tell him about our Northern shadow. “He must be after me,” I observe. “Something I may know about Uncle…about the plot to kill him. You must separate from me.”

  Simon offers an accepting smile; he will fight fate no longer. But Farid signals, “Wouldn’t it be better to confront him? Three against one.”

  I nod toward Simon’s crutches. “Bad idea. Alone, I’ll be able to lose him in the alleys of Little Jerusalem. He’s not from here. He won’t know what he’s doing. I’ll meet you both at the Estaus Palace. Wait for me.”

  They each nod their agreement and continue up toward the Rossio. I turn back for our spy so that I’m sure he can see me, then cut down past the lace-trimming stores toward what used to be the Jewish hospital. In a single jump, I nestle out of view into the limestone doorframe of the Inn of the Two Brothers. From here I will slip down the side alley back into the Rua da Ferraria, Blacksmith’s Street.

  As I press back into the doorway, several cream-white butterflies flutter in falling angles down onto fresh horse droppings.