The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon sc-1

by Richard Zimler

  “We will need to speak to all of them,” Farid said.

  As I nodded, my mind began to construct an explanation for the clues we’d found:

  Uncle had been in the house all alone, was visited by a girl whom he had known years ago‚a baker’s assistant‚ the daughter of an old friend perhaps. She was greatly troubled. Her husband had beaten her recently. What should she do? My master sat her at the kitchen table and poured her a cup of wine moderated with water, offered her a matzah. They talked of her desperation until shouts from the street drew their attention. Understanding immediately what was happening‚ Uncle told her to remain quiet‚ crept cat-like to the courtyard and then the store to look for our family members. But I was on the way back from my journey to buy kosher wine and Esther was at the market in front of St.Steven’s. Judah was with Father Carlos. Mother and Cinfa were taking siesta with a neighbor.As Old Christians battered at the doors to the store‚ he took the girl into the cellar‚ slipped the tattered Persianrugin place over the trap door from below. Curtains were drawn over the window eyeletsat the top of the northern wall so no one could see in. The tiny shutters were locked.

  Sometime later‚ during a brief quiet spell in the riot, there was a knock on the cellar door. A familiar voice calling for help. Rushing up the stairs‚ Uncle opened the threshold to our synagogue to a brother from the threshing group. This manhad argued with Uncle about a valuable manuscript‚ mayeven have plotted to purchase it behind my master’s back. Whatever the particular nature of his sin‚ he had earned the face of Haman. And yet, with a riot raging outside, all bitterness would have been forgotten for the moment.

  Eurico Damas suddenly strode in behind the thresher. He lunged without warning, pushed Uncle down the stairs. Hence the deep bruise on his shoulder. As my master rose to one knee, he was grabbed from behind. A rosary was wrapped around his neck. “Give up easily, and I swear on the Torah that I’llspare the girl!” Damas shouted.

  Uncle acceded, understanding in that moment the nature of the sacrifice he had been called upon to make. Life was squeezed from him. The thresher, a former shohet, took my master’s body, slithis throat to make sure he would not revive. He was laid gently to the ground. Blood sluiced freely across the prayer mat.

  A black thread was placed around his thumbnail to implicate Simon.

  By now, the girl had backed to the eastern wall of the cellar, was crouching in fear, begging for her life. Damas broke his promise to Uncle, grabbed her, but as he was strangling her, the rosary broke. He slit her throat, then threw her down. Her head smashed against a flower pot. Her nose broke, was twisted grotesquely out of shape. Within seconds, she had bled to death.

  The rosary beads were scattered across the slate floor of the cellar. Damas ordered the thresher to pick them up. One was left behind, lost under our desks.

  The thresher then took the key to the genizah from our eel bladder, opened the camouflaged lid. Uncle’s last Haggadah was discovered on top, paged through greedily until the killer came upon his own face as Haman. Terrified, he concealed the manuscript beneath his cape, informed Damas that they had to make an early departure.

  Damas had been told where to find our gold leaf and lapis lazuli, had just lifted them from their blackwood boxes.

  Together, they stripped the bodies so it would look as if Uncle and the girl had been making love. It was intended to be a last cruel joke to play on our family. And, of course, to point blame toward the girl’s husband. The thresher may have protested. But he was reminded of the seemingly terrible secret for which he was being blackmailed.

  All this killing provoked excitement in Damas, for there are men in whom sex is intimately woven with violence. Or perhaps he believed the scene was missing one last, perversely poetic touch. He wished to defile Uncle’s body even more foully.

  He unsheathed his sex, spilled his own seed onto Uncle.

  As for the girl, she was also known vaguely by the thresher. Her father was not just a good friend of Uncle’s, but one of his as well. And there was something in her clothing which would give this connection away. So he snatched up her dress and blouse, her undergarments even.

  Had Judah stood at the top of the stairs witnessing all this? Was he encircled by the killer’s arms and carried away?

  A secret name of God was then drawn by the thresher on his own forehead and that of Eurico Damas. On Judah’s as well, perhaps. A powerful name which had been lifted from a manual of practical kabbalah and which would enable them to pass through walls.

  And then they were gone.

  Chapter VI

  As I repeated my scenario to Farid, I heard a man’s voice coming from the courtyard. I ran up. It was a neighbor, Rabbi Solomon Ibn Verga. His bearded face was framed in the kitchen doorway, and he was talking to Cinfa of God’s mercy in comforting tones. He carried three slate tiles in one arm, a basket of onions in the other. “You made it, my boy!” he told me with a smile. As if afraid to cross the threshold into our home, he did not come toward me.

  “But most of us haven’t. Judah’s missing. And Uncle…”

  “Yes, Cinfa was telling me.” He put his basket down, motioned me over. Taking my shoulder like an elder, he said, “Never forget that your life has been preserved so you can remember. As for me, I shall make this perfidious riot the culmination of the book I’m writing on the history of the Jews.”

  “A history book?” I questioned, never having heard of such a work written by a Jew since the days of Josephus.

  “Exactly,” the Rabbi replied. “An account of all the gates of nettles we have passed through on our way to the Mount of Olives.”

  We are truly emerging into a new era, I thought. It will be a world defined by history texts, not the works of God. The rabbis and kabbalistsshall become obsolete.

  “I suggest that you make use of what you’ve experienced during the past two days in your illuminations,” the Rabbi added. “Translate what you’ve lived through into images. As Jews, that is our process of artistry.” He handed over the slate. “From your courtyard, I believe. It was on the street.”

  After I’d thanked him, he wished me peace and started to turn away. “Oh, and if you need any onions…” He held up his basket. “Someone overturned a cart. They’re not much, but they’ve come to us at bargain prices.”

  Again, one would not think humor is possible at such moments. And yet we shared a smile.

  Does insanity, like insight, comes in flashes?

  Then I heard them. The first of the screaming waves of Old Christians approaching. I pushed past our guest and ran to the gate. From the swelling murmurs and shouts, I reasoned that they were approaching from the west, from the cathedral. And rapidly.

  “What is it, my boy?” Rabbi Solomon asked.

  I turned for him. “You better get home, Rabbi. I don’t think it’s over.”

  He flipped the hood of his cloak over his head. As he passed me, he paraphrased a verse from Proverbs: “‘God punishes the one whom He loves, like the father the son he delights in.’ We are his chosen people. We shall yet see the Temple rebuilt.”

  I gathered the family together and told them they had exactly one minute to collect belongings. Rushing to the outhouse, I scooped up a clump of filth with a wooden bowl, then smeared it into the fibers of the tattered rug which covered our trap door; in this way, I hoped to deter robbers or intruders. From my room, I took with me a candlestick and a flint, several blankets and a jar of water. In a secret panel at the bottom of my chest was the vellum ribbon on which was written my name and Uncle’s. I grabbed it and tied it around my wrist, turned the golden writing flat against my skin so that it could not be read. Then, I led us down into the cellar, cursing myself all the while; the minutes I’d used talking with Farid could have been spent searching for Judah. And now…

  Atop a weak voice, I lifted a prayer begging forgiveness toward God when I realized that we would not be able to bury Uncle that day. Eyes closed, my body swaying with my heartbeat, I aske
d that this breach of duty in no way impede his soul’s journey.

  For the rest of Monday, we waited—Mother, Esther, Farid, Cinfa and I. We sat in our own separate worlds, no one talking.

  The royal blue of the prayer mat which covered the dead girl; the warm thick scent of Cinfa’s hair as she tucked her head below my shirt and breathed hot against me; the nervous buzzing of the cicadas in the courtyard. Every traitorous sensation underlined the same question: why was I here to see, to listen, to smell, when so many had died?

  “I almost wish I had died with them,” I whispered to my mother.

  “Guilt clings to us like God,” she answered. “How could it be otherwise?”

  Every time that I believed my mother wasn’t worth fighting for, she surprised me with such a verse.

  “We live to remember,” Cinfa said, repeating Rabbi Solomon’s words.

  Is it through mimicry of adults that children are able to cling to hope?

  Suddenly, there were shouts coming from the street, accusing the Marranos of having summoned the drought with witchcraft.

  It was the first of three separate occasions that day when we heard the followers of the Nazarene. Hundreds of them descended upon us in waves, led by Dominican friars shouting with the strident, high-pitched voices of eunuches for us to come out and be cleansed through flame, shrieking epithets against the devilish Jews. “Bichos meio-humanos, half-human creatures,” they called us. Once, in the late afternoon, the music of bagpipes vibrated the chestnut beams of our cellar ceiling as if to summon us to a fair. The last time, by my reckoning about three hours after the fourth evening of our Passover had descended, sharp squeals reached us in our darkness—as if a pig were being whipped through the streets. I prayed that that was all it was.

  Twice, they trampled through our house, shattering what was left of our furniture.

  Cinfa huddled between Farid and I. Esther sat stoically. Her eyes no longer had any of their dark make-up, and her graying hair fell carelessly onto her shoulders. An actress whose fellow actors have all died, whose theater has been burnt to the ground, I thought.

  Mother gripped her talismans and prayed silently. Whenever she looked at me, I could see her studying my resemblances to Judah.

  If the Christians had discovered the trap door, all would have been lost; the planks were hastily nailed back into place and the bolt on the true cellar door was broken when I burst inside to find Uncle. One false step onto the center of the rug above and they’d have literally fallen upon us.

  After darkness descended, I painted Uncle and the girl with myrrh to subdue the rising odors that signify the soul’s departure. Covered them again with prayer rugs.

  The gash in my arm from the boy’s lance finally closed with the aid of extract of comfrey. I painted it with a thin layer of marigold juice to ensure healing, wrapped it with a linen handkerchief.

  I gathered my courage once and whispered to Aunt Esther, “Had you ever seen the dead girl before?” She was seated on a bench we’d brought down from the kitchen, my mother’s thick mantilla of brown Flemish wool blanketing her shoulders. Her right hand, wrapped in a bloody linen towel was wedged between her legs in protection of what had been defiled.

  She would not utter a sound, and I knew that her soul had fled deep inside her body.

  Was it a cruel question to ask Esther? I didn’t care; I had to know if she knew. Not for the prurient reasons she probably thought.

  I kept the girl’s golden wedding band in my pouch to give to her husband, prayed that he was still alive to cherish it.

  Uncle’s signet ring I kissed and placed in the blackwood box which had held our gold leaf; I felt it might have pained Esther to see me wearing it.

  When mother asked me about the whereabouts of this keepsake, I thought it might be a propitious time to talk with her. “Who knew of the genizah?” I asked her.

  She pulled her head in like a hen, stared at me as if I were insane and told me to ask no more questions.

  After the cathedral had tolled midnight, we heard Brites, our Old Christian laundress, calling desperately for us from the courtyard with the shrill voice of a lost gull. I was about to shout up to her when my mother thrust her hands at me and formed a cross.

  I realized then that hell was being unsure if a little brother was in the clutches of torturers with respect for neither the beauty of the human body nor the sanctity of the soul.

  And I wondered who it was who was etched as Uncle’s murderer on the Enduring Tablet of Moslem tradition. I vowed to discover the girl’s identity. More than ever, I believed that she was the key.

  Early Tuesday morning, I found I had had enough of darkness and hesitancy. My legs and arms were clenched with the need for air and movement. In the purplish haze before dawn, I resolved to start looking for Judah, Reza and the members of the threshing group. I reasoned that there would be few Christians about at that hour of the morning.

  “You mustn’t go!” my mother whispered to me. Her nails dug in to the pulp of my flesh. “No! It’s not safe. And you have to recite morning prayers. Uncle will be angry if you haven’t done your work for the Lord.”

  “Morning prayers will have to wait!” I told her. I broke free, entrusted everything in my pouch save my knife to Farid.

  He accepted my offerings without gesture. His eyes were bloodshot, and lines of sweat were sliding across his cheeks. When I kissed his forehead, it burned, tasted of foul disease. He turned away from my probing stare, and I saw that the bruises on his neck had soured to black and yellow.

  “What is it that you feel?” I asked with my hands.

  “A spiny animal is scraping my gut, trying to get out,” he signalled weakly.

  Was it plague? If he were to depart, who would speak my inner language, help me to find Uncle’s killer?

  Fixed by hopelessness, I continued to watch him, remembering that it was our old friend Murça Benjamin who first said that he and I were twins gifted to different parents. Dearest Murça was to be remarried soon, after the illness and death of her first husband. Had she even survived?

  As I started my search, I grabbed the hammer from our shed and whispered to God, “Return Judah to us and take me in his stead.”

  For a shield against Christians, I inner-chanted verses from the Zohar.

  Nearest me, the Rua de São Pedro was empty. A dark, cottony haze blanketed the city. Those shutters which had resisted the onslaught of rioters were locked as if never to be opened. Gulls flew overhead, luminescent, as if about to burst into flame. Down by St. Peter’s Gate, a stout woman carrying a wicker basket atop her head began running with a painful, bobbing gait. High above her, beyond the twin towers of the cathedral, ribbons of smoke were unraveling into the air; the pyre in the Rossio must have still been raging.

  The door to Father Carlos’ apartment was still locked. Inside St. Peter’s, hanging oil lamps sputtered with flame. In the the nave lay corpses splayed like drowned fishermen washed to shore.

  Senhora Telo the seamstress was on her back under the fresco of the Annunciation which decorates the transept. Her face was white and waxen, her eyes closed. No blood. None at all. Her tin whistle, meant for calling her children, dangled over her shoulder.

  A growl turned me. A pink-nosed, tawny mongrel had its front paws across the stomach of a man whose chest was soaked black. Ears pricked, he raised a crusted, throbbing lip to show fangs, growled from his gut as if I might challenge him for the body.

  I headed to St. Michael’s Church. Many lay stiff and silent before the altar of the Nazarene. I took a candle from a side chapel and searched. Judah was not among them.

  At St. Steven’s, I found a body of an adolescent girl in the courtyard garden, inside a circular bed of the most perfect marigolds. She was being picked by a hunched, methodical vulture with an indifferent gaze. Watching him, I learned that these birds rip first at the soft tissue—the lips and tongue, the eyes. The girl was beyond recognition.

  The caretaker of the churc
h, an Old Christian, came out from his hiding place in a side chapel before I left. To my question, he shook his head and said, “No, not Father Carlos. Others. Most were heading for the river. There was talk of boats carrying Jews to the other side.”

  I found that the only thing which could now upset me was kindness. When he hugged me, my foundations slid away. I pushed him away and reached out for a wall. Then I ran.

  Dawn was spreading a gauzy light over the horizon. Swallows were scooping great arcs of air all around me, twittering as if in hurried speech. Cutting down to the Tagus, I described Judah to the fishmongers setting up their stalls to sell last night’s catch. They’d seen nothing. “Were Jews killed?” one asked me. As if bored with the very idea, she yawned.

  When I overturned her table, she shrieked like a parrot. But no one dared confront me; people recognize madness and draw away.

  Then I walked toward the city center as far as the inner rim of the Terreiro do Trigo, Wheat Square. I dared not go any further; at the quayside, two Portuguese longshoremen and a group of blond northern sailors were exchanging shouted curses. Four men were sprawled dead between them. A pack of murdered dogs lay scattered around the ornamental cross at the center of the square, their blood soaking into hay strewn from recently unloaded bales. Further away, on one of the piers used for repairing vessels, a cheering crowd had gathered to watch the violation of an African slave girl. Pressed face-down to the slimy wood planks, she grunted at the crude madness of the little man thrusting against her back. Inside the floating city of ships, sailors and merchants watched and laughed. I turned back for the relative safety of the Little Jewish Quarter. My first steps seemed to pose the question: Do the Old Christians hate us so violently because we gave them Jesus, the savior they never really wanted?

  The single-story house Reza shared with her in-laws centered the northern perimeter of Lemon Tree Square. The sun had just poked its eye over the eastern horizon when I reached there. Her door was closed but unlocked. The great chestnut wood table in the kitchen was kneeling; it had lost two of its legs.