The Lost Book of Adana Moreau

by Michael Zapata

  “So, you see,” I explained, “there would be no reason for me to leave my wife’s side. Let alone to murder somebody I have never even met.” The man in the cell had been right. All of this was some horrible mistake.

  “Of course, of course, just a few more questions, Mr. Druer, and then if everything checks out you can return to your lovely wife.”

  The captain picked up the gold timepiece and stared at it for a moment. He then put it back on the table and covered it with his hand. “Did you get a good look at the men in the cell with you? Do you know any of those men?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know any of those men. This morning was the first time I had seen any of them.”

  “Are you sure?” asked the captain, and made a rough noise with his throat.

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “Of course, of course,” said the captain. He looked at the guards and said something in Italian, but I didn’t understand. He spoke a dialect that sounded like Italian, but could’ve been anything. The guard with the notepad said something in return and both the guards and the captain chuckled.

  “Okay, Mr. Druer,” the captain continued, and leaned forward in his chair, “I’ll let you in on something here. You’ll be let free. All the men I spoke to before you were let free. I thought that maybe one of them or even you might have something to do with the murder. Not directly, mind you, but as an accomplice. Maybe, even indirectly, you understand?”

  I was silent. I did not understand the captain’s point.

  “In any case, I believe you’re innocent. I believe the other four are innocent, as well. I thought that maybe...” And here he trailed off somewhat. “Anyway, it seems as if I was wrong. Too bad, eh?”

  There was something monstrous in the way the captain said too bad.

  I looked out the porthole. The ocean wobbled, and beyond I could glimpse the light of the setting sun.

  “I don’t like traveling west,” he said. “There are always problems westward. Too many refugees like you, Mr. Druer. Not all of them are bad, of course, but they cause problems nonetheless. Now, eastward, that’s the way to travel. On our return trip, the ship will be full of goods and rich Americans. Everything will be quiet and smooth. The sea is kinder somehow when we travel east, toward Rome.” He glanced at his gold timepiece and then put it back into his uniform pocket. He then took out a thin knife from his scabbard and handed it to the guard standing at my right. The guard saluted and left. The other guard remained. “Have you ever been to Jerusalem, Mr. Druer?”

  I shook my head.

  “Sometimes, I think about how the Roman soldiers under Pompey came to that forsaken part of the world. I wonder what they thought. It was definitely a very different place than the grandeur of Rome. Of course, they conquered the land in no time at all. But still the Jews gave the Romans trouble. Revolt after revolt. For centuries. My father used to tell me how some Jews even became pirates near the seas of Phoenicia and Egypt. Maybe, you’ve read about this?”

  I nodded and stared out the porthole. The light was now bloodred, or maybe I am imagining that color right now. Regardless, the sun was still setting.

  “And I imagine,” the captain continued, “that you’ve never been to the Dead Sea then? Well, you should go one day. It’s really an astonishing place. Due to its high salinity, the water is so buoyant you can’t sink. Even if you tried. Actually, it’s quite relaxing to just lie on its waters and float. That’s not all. The minerals and salts in the Dead Sea have healing properties. With my own eyes, I have seen it cure migraines, arthritis, and cancer. Of course, it took true Romans to notice this. On the advice of his Roman superiors, the Judean king Herod the Great even set up a health resort there for himself. So, you can understand why the Romans, who lived, breathed, and died by the mercy of Neptune, took a particular interest in the Dead Sea. They truly understood the power of the seas. Ah! Well, I’m speaking in circles. So, the Jewish rebels. Well, the Romans had an interesting way of dealing with the Jewish rebels. Do you want to hear about it?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Of course, you do. Well, the Romans knew the Dead Sea could heal, but also that it could be used as a form of punishment. In any given Roman unit, there was at least one artist who was prone to painting. The Romans, as you know, were extraordinary artists. Well, there are many similarities between the brush and the knife. The Romans understood this well. They brought captured rebels to the banks of the Dead Sea and tied their limbs together, like you would a sacrificial lamb or a pig, and then the artist made hundreds of deep cuts into their flesh. Right into the face and lips and limbs and torso and the genitals. Then they threw the rebels into the Dead Sea.

  “I can tell you from personal experience that even just one small sliver is painful in the Dead Sea. The salt enters the flesh and the pain is almost unbearable. But hundreds of deep cuts. That sort of pain is inconceivable. Most rebels tried to drown themselves, but the prospect of that was difficult, since the Dead Sea kept them afloat. It’s a time-consuming way to die, which is the point, of course, but eventually the rebels died. They bled to death in the sea. If they were lucky, they lost consciousness first. The truly lucky suffered a heart attack and died immediately. Once, I’m told, nearly two hundred rebels were punished in concert this way. Can you imagine the horror of that? So, you understand, the Dead Sea is both an Eden and a particular type of hell. You really should visit one day. It’s your ancestral waters after all.”

  The captain then stood up, blocking the view of the porthole. “But you’re going west,” he continued, “toward this New Rome. So many of you are going west. Do you know what they do to Jews in the United States, Mr. Druer?”

  I was silent for a long, long time.

  The captain motioned toward the guard, who placed his hand on my shoulder.

  “Let’s go.”

  Once again, I was led through the ship and down passageway after passageway. At one point, we walked through a large dining room, which was decorated in various shades of gray marble. Dazzling stripes of gold lined the walls and reminded me of the bright rays of a warm sun. Well-dressed first-class passengers were smiling and eating roasted chicken and potatoes. It smelled wonderful. I hadn’t eaten anything all day. In some ways, the short walk through the dining room was worse than being held in the ship’s cell. The guard, who winked at me, was well aware of that fact. I was then led to the deck of the ship. Thousands of stars were in the sky and a cool breeze blew over the deck. Everything was eerily quiet. At that point, the guard handed me off to a commanding sailor and left.

  I was led to a rubber lifeboat. The lifeboat hung over the edge of the ship, ready to be dropped into the ocean. I wasn’t exactly sure what was happening, so I kept quiet and gave the commanding sailor a hard stare. He handed me an official-looking note. It said: It’s not the Dead Sea, but it’ll do. Captain Argenti.

  The cool air suddenly felt frigid. I wondered if the captain had lied to me and if he had brought the other prisoners here. I thought the worst. Was the captain quietly executing us like Jewish rebels, one by one? Had their lacerated and raw bodies been dumped into the ocean? It seemed impossible. The commanding sailor then told me to get into the lifeboat. I refused. He wore an indifferent expression, which, I think, is more menacing than an angry expression. Someone who is indifferent will do anything. He took out a pistol from his belt buckle. He released the safety, aimed the muzzle at my chest, and shrugged.

  There was nothing I could do, I realized. Maybe, the captain’s note had been an empty threat. I hadn’t been tied up. I didn’t see any other sailors, let alone one with a knife. In desperation, I thought that I could somehow survive at sea in the lifeboat, that another ship might come by and that this possibility far outweighed the possibility of surviving a gunshot wound to the chest. I took a deep breath and got in the lifeboat.

  From above, I heard a mechanical crank, and th
e lifeboat slowly descended along the hull of the ship. My poor, poor Alinochka, I thought sadly. What would they tell her? What would she tell our child? Near the surface of the ocean, however, the lifeboat suddenly stopped. To my left, just under the foaming waters, four tremendous propellers were spinning.

  Then I saw the teacher. A fine mist, created by the propellers, spread through the air and obscured his body, but I immediately knew it was him. He was hung up naked by ropes—his legs and feet tied together behind his back—and suspended two meters above the propellers. Long, deep cuts covered his entire body. Some of the cuts were in the shape of letters or indecipherable symbols. His once pale skin was a horrific shade of pink, the color of a freshly caught and sliced salmon. Thin layers of salt encrusted his wounds. A considerable amount of blood was dripping from these wounds into the churning ocean, leaving a thin trail of crimson behind the ship as it moved through the water. The sight of that trail of blood in the ocean still haunts me.

  I couldn’t tell if the teacher was alive or dead. This is what the captain meant by his note. This was his punishment. He was a madman. I vomited over the side of the lifeboat until my stomach clenched. Then I started yelling. The oppressive sound of the propellers drowned out my voice, but I was sure I could get someone’s attention. Before long, the commanding sailor popped his head over the ship’s railing and pointed his pistol at me. He then adjusted the pistol and fired a warning shot into the ocean.

  The teacher looked at me. His face, like his body, was covered in hemorrhaging cuts, though these were crisscrossed in strange and horrible patterns. A bloody rag was stuffed into his mouth and tied tightly behind his head with a thick rope. He was alive, but barely. I could tell that it must have taken substantial effort to keep his eyes open. I imagined that the pain he was suffering was horrifying, nightmarish. I have never felt as much sorrow in my life as when he looked at me just then. I tried to say something in Yiddish, but nothing came out. He turned away and closed his eyes.

  I remained in the lifeboat, unable to help the teacher. Whether he had murdered the Italian or not didn’t matter to me. Nobody deserved this. I sat down and felt true helplessness and despair, like an abandoned child. I tried to close my eyes and think of the labyrinth, the familiar darkness and the cool, hard touch of the walls, but I couldn’t. There was nothing about this or fate that made any sense. Time passed, but it was difficult to tell how much. A few rock-like clouds floated in the sky to the south. The moon was out, but its light was thin and vaporous. The stars flickered violently, yet how could that be? They were just stars. Once or twice, the teacher spasmed and I thought that he might somehow fall into the ocean. At one point, he looked at me again, his eyes clear and wide, but it was as if he were looking right through me. As if I were a ghost.

  More time passed. The teacher inched toward death. It was miserable. I couldn’t watch anymore, but there was nothing I could do to escape the image of the dying man. I stared into the ocean, transfixed by its waves and cold, moving surface. The sea has a hallucinatory power. Just beneath its surface I saw Vitebsk. I saw its cathedral and monastery and synagogues. I saw its three rivers, which were steel blue tunnels boring down into the ocean floor. I saw clearly the people of Vitebsk, old rabbis wandering aimlessly, peasants carrying scythes, vengeful soldiers marching toward some distant, fiery catastrophe. And then I saw Alexander Sidorov. I saw his face. I saw his Turkish sword, the fin of a restless shark circling the dark waters.

  I imagine all of this must have lasted a few minutes, but I have no way to tell. At some point, I fell asleep and dreamed that I was drowning. I was overcome with the vague and yet extremely relentless sensation of having entered the sea, of being swallowed up in its cold, fierce, and starless waters.

  * * *

  When I woke, the lifeboat was full of water and the sun was rising from the eastern edges of the Atlantic Ocean. The teacher was slumped over. His eyes were open. At first, I thought that he was staring into the rising sun, but then I realized that he was dead. Shortly after, the lifeboat ascended. On the deck, a quiet and boyish sailor nodded at me and I walked away free.

  That afternoon there was a small funeral for the Italian man who had been murdered. For some uncanny reason, I attended. Sailors wrapped his body in an Italian flag and then they put him on a bier. A few family members gave eulogies and there were prayers. He was then lowered into the ocean. There was no ceremony for the teacher. For all anyone knew or cared, he had disappeared. That must have been the sixth day at sea.

  The next morning, you were born, Benjaminas. Given everything that your poor mother had been through, there were a few serious complications. But a good doctor came to see her and, after a long, nerve-wracking day, everything was fine. The captain had sent the doctor, as promised. Your birth filled me with such joy, but it was also preceded by a nightmare. It’s difficult even today for me to explain what all this meant to your mother and me. But maybe now you can understand this nightmare a little more. Without you, Benjaminas, without even the idea of you nestled in your mother’s belly, I would have died with the teacher. If not a physical death, then an inner death, a metaphysical death as they used to say in Petrograd, which in many ways is worse. Meaning and purpose would have slipped away from life. Does this make sense? Without you, I really would have become a living ghost. But maybe this is too much. Maybe, I am embarrassing you now?

  * * *

  “No, tateh,” said Benjamin. He took the cards from the table and started stacking them one by one. Then he turned to his father, sadly, and asked, “Why didn’t you tell anyone about the teacher?”

  Saul looked at his son for a moment.

  “It’s simple,” he said, “or maybe it seemed simple then. I was afraid for your life and your mother’s life. The captain, I believed, was a madman. In a very real way. I never doubted that he would do something horrible if I told anyone on the ship. At the funeral for the Italian man, during one of the prayers, I caught a glimpse of the captain standing on the deck. I’m deeply ashamed to say it, but I even thought about killing him. In the end, I’m not that type of man. You should never be that type of man, as you boys both know. For years, I dreamed that the captain was a Roman dybbuk. I dreamed that the spirit of a long-dead and suffering Roman soldier had been drawn to some sort of severe melancholy or psychosis in the Italian captain, and that it was controlling him. But, I don’t know, those were just dreams.”

  Saul stared at the candle, as if he was trying to transfer those dreams to its flames. “And now, it’s very late,” he said, “we should be sleeping.”

  “One more thing, tateh,” said Benjamin, “what happened to Alexander Sidorov?”

  At this, he smiled. “I don’t know. Sometimes, I imagine that one day a polite and spotless Red Army soldier will deliver a letter here from Alexander. It’s a foolish thought, I know.”

  Saul stood up. “Now, we really should be sleeping,” he said, “I’ve been talking through the night like someone possessed with sod ha’ibbur.”

  “Okay, tateh,” said Benjamin.

  “Maxwell,” said Saul, “you may stay here for as long as you need.”

  After Maxwell washed up, Saul asked him if he needed help bringing the cot down from the roof. Maxwell told him that he would like to sleep on the rooftop for one more night. Saul nodded and smiled at the boy. It was very late. The kitchen was dark. Still, faint moonlight entered through the window. There were shadows everywhere in the kitchen, but somehow they were pleasant shadows, the shadows cast by flawless geometric figures.

  They went to the rooftop and when they reached the door Maxwell opened it with a key that Benjamin had given him. A few pigeons rested on the ledge, cooing softly. A cool breeze blew over the roof. From somewhere in the distance, the rattle of a train could be heard. Maxwell hesitated a moment and then said, “If it’s okay, I have a question, too.”

  “Of course,” said Saul.

  �
��Where is Benjamin’s mother, Alinochka?”

  The father regarded the boy.

  “She became very ill and passed away when he was just five,” the father said. “After all these years, she was the only other person who knew about how we came to this country. She really knew the story. All the dark and joyous aspects of it. In fact, even though I experienced all those things on the ship, she understood them much better than I ever could. Memories should pass through a mother. If she were here, I think, she would have told you our story much better than I ever could.”

  They walked in silence to the storage shed and stopped there.

  “And your mother?” asked Saul, somewhat reluctantly.

  “My mother,” Maxwell began, but he couldn’t finish.

  “I understand,” said Saul, “it’s the same with us.”

  * * *

  In the mornings, after rye bread and coffee, Maxwell and Benjamin returned to the market to search for Maxwell’s father, but there was still no sign of him. They went to the police station, but the police were disinterested. One sluggish, pock-marked officer told the boys that everybody’s old man went missing at some point and then half-heartedly asked Maxwell a few questions and filled out a yellow form. Another officer just shrugged and told Maxwell that unless he was greatly mistaken he would never see his father again.

  Sometimes, as they searched, Maxwell felt feverish. He thought it was the overwhelming sense of aimlessness that made his body burn, but later he understood that the sensation was anger at his father for deserting him. Afterward, more often than not, they left the market and took El trains to neighborhoods that were vaguely reminiscent of foreign countries. At seven or eight, just before dusk, they’d take the streetcar back.