The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon sc-1

by Richard Zimler

  From Little Jerusalem and the Judiaria Pequena, even the small Jewish street on the other side of town near the Carmelite Church, we drag our dead. A few have donkey carts like us. Most have folded their loved ones into wooden wheelbarrows.

  Our elders direct us to the fields that have not been used in the past for graves. I nod my solidarity to all who pass but do not talk except to ask after Judah and the two living threshers—Father Carlos and Diego Gonçalves. No one has seen them.

  I dig two pits with the help of three Moorish laborers who’ve come to earn extra money. They have silent black eyes and ask no questions.

  Reza insists on helping. “Beri, I need to do something,” she says. “The world starts caving in every time I sit still.” She stares up at me with lost eyes and chews nervously on the ends of her hair, a habit from childhood she has regained.

  For Uncle, Mother chooses a spot by a young almond tree whose candelabrum arms are upraised in prayer toward the turquoise sky. The girl has found rest by a broad cork tree whose branches unfurl like the arms of a welcoming grandfather.

  The scribe Isaac Ibn Farraj chants with us. He is here burying Moses Almal’s head; it seems that Isaac was the lunatic who had raced in front of the pyre in the Rossio to steal his friend’s last vestige from the flames and spare his ghost from a wandering afterlife in the Lower Realms. “I’ve seen enough Christians for one lifetime,” he confides to me. “I’m learning Turkish. It’s easy, written with Arabic characters. I’m going to get on the first boat to Salonika I can find. They say it’s becoming a Jewish city. Anyway, I suggest you do the same.”

  “And what of your home here?”

  “Pretty soon all our friends will be gone from Portugal anyway. And believe me, I won’t make the same mistake Lot’s wife made!”

  Thinking of the note which slipped from Diego’s turban, which mentioned the name “Isaac,” I ask, “Before the riot, did you set up any special meeting with Diego Gonçalves the printer?”

  “Not that I recall.”

  “And the twenty-ninth of this month, this coming Friday—does it mean anything special to you?”

  Isaac scratches the white, fungus-like hairs on his chin and folds out his lower lip. “Beri,” he says, “I can see you’re in trouble and need help. But you’ll have to talk plainer if you want me to understand.” He takes my hand, and his eyes focus upon me with tenderness.

  It suddenly seems ridiculous to have suspected him of being the Isaac mentioned in the note; he has never had any connections to the threshing group, nor any reason for antagonism toward Uncle. I realize that I’m beginning to mistrust everyone. “Never mind,” I say. At my request, he then tries to revive Esther by beseeching her in Persian. She replies with eyes of glass.

  Seven times I circle Uncle’s grave praying. As it should be for a Ba’al Shem, Master of the Divine Name. My Hebrew prayer voice, rising and falling like water across walls of weathered sandstone, seems to originate in an ancient past. Forced to walk, I leave my family to bury Senhora Rosamonte’s hand below a lemon tree. With my thanks, I take her aquamarine ring as her last gift and place it in my pouch with Diego’s message and the girl’s wedding band; it may one day redeem the life of another swallow taken by Pharaoh.

  On my way back to my family, I pause for a moment to place the palm of my hand flat against the trunk of a massive cork tree whose valuable bark has recently been peeled away. For some reason, perhaps to better feel the power of the verdant giant, I close my eyes. Immediately, a great light sets the darkness ablaze with an orange-black fire and a humid warmth seems to pass right through me. A great rustling of leaves comes to me from high above, as if an eagle or heron has alighted on a topmost branch. “Yes, we are here,” comes Uncle’s voice. “But do not open your eyes. Our radiance would overwhelm you.”

  As I squeeze my eyelids closed in protection, he says, “Berekiah, the bark of a tree is not merely a symbol to be used in poetry. It is a real presence which shares the Lower Realms with you. It grows, it dies, and it can be removed by a woodsman. Feel your hand meeting the solidity which lies beneath such bark.”

  I squeeze the trunk between my hands, sense a fluid power rising from the earth up through my legs and into my head.

  “You have been drawn to this tree because it has reminded you that a mask can be something other than a metaphor,” he says. “It can be a real adornment, as well.”

  As I think, Please, Uncle, address me as simply as you can, he replies in a tone of anger: “We speak in the language of the Upper Realms and know of no other way to converse!” Regaining a tone of compassion, he continues: “Remember, our shadow is your light. Our simplest clarity is your greatest paradox. Berekiah, listen. You must never send your illuminations with a courier who doesn’t recognize himself in his mirror from one day to the next. And remember the eyesight of he who speaks with ten tongues.”

  At that, there is a quivering in my hands and a flapping sound from above. The blazing darkness behind my eyelids fades to gray; the bird—Uncle—has flown away. Opening my eyes, I stare through the empty canopy of branches above into the great blue sky.

  His words repeat inside me: Never send your illuminations with a courier who doesn’t recognize himself in his mirror from one day to the next. Was he referring to a man with no self-knowledge? Or someone without memory, perhaps, who has sought to leave behind his past, to deny its existence. A man who cannot recognize himself because he does not wish to recall the personal history which helped to make him who he is today.

  And remember the eyesight of he who speaks with ten tongues. Farid. Uncle could only have been referring to his fingers—his ten tongues. My master meant for me to count on his discernment in learning the identity of this man who could not even recognize himself.

  For a moment, I am tempted to pray over the vellum ribbon on my wrist for my master to visit me again, to give me a clearer answer in the language of the Lower Realms. Deep in my gut, however, I fear entering the realm of practical kabbalah; Uncle must have had his reasons for speaking to me in riddles.

  “Beri!” It is Mother, calling to me from across the field.

  As I start toward her, I think: More and more, the world is intruding on my inner life of contemplation. Just as Uncle knew it would.

  After Reza and I wash our hands in a nearby creek, we leave the Almond Farm right away; I am afraid for Farid’s life. And the Old Christians could descend like locusts at any time.

  Just before reaching home, I jump down from the cart to enquire about Father Carlos at St. Peter’s Church. There is still no sign of him, and his apartment remains locked. So I climb the streets and outdoor stairways of the Alfama to Diego’s townhouse. The cobbler who helped me avoid capture the day before hails me from his doorway, nods for me to come to him. “Don’t go in,” he whispers.

  “Why?”

  “A man came looking for your friend Diego. He left a little while ago. But he’s been here before, watching. He may be here even now. Hiding, waiting. Just smile and nod at me, then go away.”

  I do him one better and feign a laugh, then ask, “Who is this man?”

  “I don’t know. A Northerner. Blond, strong.”

  I bow my thanks and leave, my steps repeating the question: Could the same manwho killed Uncle now be hunting Diego?

  At home, hard-boiled eggs are being prepared for lunch by Reza. Of course, cooking should be a neighbor’s duty during our initial mourning period of seven days, but there is no one left who isn’t grieving. All the ceramic debris has been swept from the kitchen into the courtyard, the floor mopped. Even the leg of our table which had been knocked off has been nailed in place.

  “Brites did it while we were gone,” Reza explains. “She’s cleaning the store now with the others.”

  “Esther’s with her, too?” I ask.

  “No, she’s sitting vigil over Farid in your mother’s room.”

  “And Aviboa?”

  “Yes, she’s helping clean up, is sticking
close to Cinfa.” Reza chews on the ends of her hair and sighs. “I’m going to have to adopt her, you know. I can’t leave her to fend for herself. Graça, her mother, was a widow and an only child.”

  “Is she Jewish?”

  Reza’s eyes flash. “A four-year-old girl? Who are you, Berekiah Zarco, to ask such a question about an orphan? You think kids are born knowing Hebrew or something? What difference could it possibly…”

  “Reza, you misunderstand me. I don’t care. It’s just that it could create complications.”

  “I live with nothing but complications.” She sighs again, brushes her hand against my arm as an apology. “Her father was a New Christian, Graça was Old.”

  “It’s safer not to tell my mother that…for now, at least.”

  As Reza nods, I kiss her cheek. Caressing open the door to my mother’s room, I find Farid lying on his side under two heavy blankets, shivering. Aunt Esther sits on her stool by the foot of the bed, still staring at nothing, her hands folded in her lap. I kiss her cool forehead.

  A rumpled and bloodstained sheet has been pulled from the bed, is tucked against the wall.

  Farid’s eyes open, but he does not smile or acknowledge me in any way. I take a woolen blanket from my bed and cover him with yet another layer, kneel beside him, move to take his hand. He waves me away. “It could be plague,” he signals.

  “Your gestures are stronger,” I lie. We lock fingers, and his eyes close again. I sit picturing map-contours of Portugal, Greece and Turkey as if shapes on a chessboard where my family and I serve as pawns.

  When Farid’s shivering subsides and he falls asleep, I caress his hair for a time. Grabbing the stained sheet and balling it up beneath my arm, I tiptoe out and across my bedroom to hide his incontinence from my mother, fearing that she may demand that the family abandon him because of his worsening illness. Reza starts when she sees me, but her subsequent stare denotes solidarity. Behind an oleander bush to the side of our outhouse, I hide the sheet. Later, I will tell Brites that it is there and to be careful of the evil essences it has absorbed when washing it.

  Lacking vinegar, I clean my hands with black soap and water, go to the cellar and write my list of suspects—beginning with the two remaining threshers—on a piece of vellum in micrographic letters forming Uncle’s name:

  Father Carlos.

  Diego Gonçalves.

  Rabbi Losa.

  Miguel Ribeiro.

  With my last stroke, I think: the girl we have buried will point like a vane toward the correct name.

  I take my drawing of her, slip my hammer inside my pouch and walk to all the bakeries in the Alfama and Graça neighborhoods, sensing that she is the key, that if I can find her identity, I will also learn who it was who destroyed my future.

  Now that calm has returned, my eyes see that Lisbon has become a city of staring Christian eyes, of garbage and dung, of splintered wood and bloody stone. None of a half-dozen bakers or their assistants whom I question knows the girl. I cut down past the cathedral and head into Little Jerusalem. Stores are closed, streets littered with refuse. Women sweep blood from their stoops. A burnt bed sits smoldering right in the middle of the Synagogue Square as if waiting for its owner. Simon Kol’s bakery behind the Riverside Palace is boarded up. I slip around the side, past a pile of rotten cabbages and onions being picked through by feral cats, one of whom has furry testicles swollen to the size of lemons. When I pound on Master Kol’s personal entrance, he peers down from a window. His unshaven cheeks and bewildered eyes are the symptoms of the illness we all share. “Pedro Zarco?” he asks. When I nod, he points to his courtyard. I wait at the gate. As he lets me in, he hugs and kisses me. His chest heaves like a bellows as he sobs.

  He is dressed in the coarse linen of mourning. “Kiri?” I whisper, naming his only living child with the same, trespassing fear as I would a secret name of God.

  “Yes,” he answers. We hold hands. “How’s your family?” he asks.

  “Uncle Abraham is dead.”

  Simon gasps. “How could he have…”

  His words trail off because we both know that in this world even a gaon, a genius, a man of wonders can be killed by a simple blade.

  To my question about Judah, he shakes his head. “Many are missing,” he says. “And they will never be found. Swallowed by Leviathan. And mark my words,” he says in a prophetic voice, “the monster will only be sated when it has taken all of us. Wait and see!”

  I hand him my drawing. “This girl…ever see her? I think she may work in a bakery.”

  He squints. “Looks a little like Meda Forjaj when she was young,” he says. “Same sloping eyebrows that come together over the bridge of her nose. Like butterfly wings. But I don’t know her.”

  “Who’s Meda Forjaj?”

  “Fled Little Jerusalem about the time of the conversion. But she’d be about fifty by now. A widow. Couldn’t be her.”

  “Where’d she move?”

  “Out near Belem, I think.” Belem was the nearby town from which the Portuguese caravels left for Africa, India and the New World. “I think she was hoping to meet a rich explorer if you know what I mean,” Simon adds. He shrugs, gestures that he makes no judgment. “We do what we need to in order to survive.”

  “A woman her age—she can’t earn a living just from that,” I say.

  “Her husband imported woolens from Flanders. She helped out, kept the books. Maybe she takes in sewing like your mother.”

  “Thanks.” We hug lightly, as if afraid to admit we may be parting forever. “You won’t open your bakery again, will you,” I observe.

  Simon shakes his head. “I no longer want to feed this country,” he says. “A bleeder,” he whispers. “Its a much better profession for Portugal.”

  The collective gaze of the Old Christians massed at St. Catherine’s Gate chills the hairs at the back of my neck, but this readiness of my body to break into flight is unnecessary; their eyes are calm, their breathing easy. Their fear of plague and drought and all the myriad demons who rule their knotted thoughts has been purged, at least for the moment.

  I reach the outskirts of Belem in less than an hour. Here, hundreds of Africans and day laborers ruled by the whip are hard at work building a monumental new monastery for King Manuel that should take well into the next century to complete.

  A ragpicker in soiled pants points me to a local bakery. A lean woman with an accusing, bitter face meets me at the door. “Can I help you, Senhor?” she asks in harsh, Castilian-edged Portuguese.

  From her accent, I know that she is a Castilian New Christian, one of the thousands who fled here after King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella expelled the Jews in fourteen ninety-two. In her fierce eyes, I see that she loathes being seen with a compatriot. I show her my drawing. “I’m looking for this girl.”

  She turns her back to me and begins transferring buns from wooden pallets into sacks.

  “Its important,” I add.

  “If you’ve nothing to order, then leave.”

  “She’s dead,” I say. “I’d like to tell her parents.”

  She turns, and mistrust gives her a squint. “She’s Senhora Monteiro’s girl. Why do…”

  “And Senhora Monteiro lives…?” I interrupt; I’ve no more patience for fear, even that which belongs to a Jew.

  “Down the street, on the right. A house with yellow trim. But it might be better…”

  “Tell me, does Senhora Monteiro have any relation to Meda Forjaj?”

  “Her sister-in-law,” she replies. “How did you…?”

  “Eyebrows like spreading butterfly wings. And the memory of an old Jew.”

  Down the street, a dwarfish, fish-eyed woman with a scaly, leathery face glares up at me from her door as if I’ve interrupted a card game. She wears a ragged wig made from waxed, black-linen thread.

  “Are you Senhora Monteiro?” I ask.

  “Who wants to know?”

  “My name would mean nothing to you.” I hand her my sket
ch. “Do you recognize this girl?”

  “It’s Teresa. What are you doing with this?”

  Her husband, a squat, rabbit-like man, appears at the back of the house. He is soiled with white powder, perhaps quicklime, and puffs rise from his bare fat feet as he strides toward us. Above his sleepy dark eyes sprout winged brows.

  The woman says, “This man’s got a drawing of Teresa. Look.”

  His jaw drops as if he’s never seen artwork—or as if he understands. When I force out clinging words about her death, fists raise to his cheeks. Tears gush in his eyes. When I reach for him, Senhora Monteiro intercepts my wrist. “What are you saying?!” she demands.

  “She was killed in the riot in Lisbon. On Sunday.”

  The Senhora’s hand muffles her gasp. Terrified eyes focus inside. Silence seals the three of us together till she screams, “I knew it would come to this! Killed with those Jews, wasn’t she?!”

  Her husband shoves her, runs back into the house before I can answer. She crashes up against the wall and crumples to the ground. “You bastard!” she shrieks. She cackles, spits after him.

  I help the Senhora to her feet, retrieve my drawing from the ground. She has no tears to give, so I say, “She was killed in the Judiaria Pequena. Do you know what she was doing there?”

  She snatches my drawing from me and surveys it as if forming a criticism. “That’s her all right. You make this?”

  “Yes,” I reply.

  “Artist, huh? Filthy goat should never have run off. But girls from mixed marriages…cause that’s what she was, you know…I’m not Jewish. Thank God.” She waves toward the back of the house as if shooing away a fly. “He’s a Jew…was, I mean. It’s the mixed blood. Makes girls want a man as soon as they start to bleed. The moon, it causes friction, they say, in the children of mixed marriages.” She rubs her filthy, callused hands together. “All that swirling of blood, the pure with the tainted.” She shakes her head. “You got talent, you know. You’re not Jewish, are you?”