The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon sc-1

by Richard Zimler

  “Is she a laundress or a baker?” I question.

  “Neither,” he smiles. “It’s the wrong…”

  When I take her ring of braided gold filaments from my pouch, he grabs it from me. The certainty in his voice falters. “It’s the right kind. But really, it doesn’t prove anything. I know other women who have rings just like it.”

  “Her hands smelled of olive oil, rosemary and lemon oil. She had ash stains. And two indentations on her temples. Like the marks made…”

  The blood descends from Manuel’s face. He kneels to keep from fainting. As if giving way to sleep, he closes his eyes and begins to weep. When he has his breath, he says, “Candles… She works with Master Bento. They make scented candles together. With floral essences. When the wax has cooled, they’re coated with olive oil to keep them fresh.”

  “And the indentations?”

  Manuel nods. “At birth. The midwife had to pry her out. With a forceps. She wouldn’t come. Afraid to take first steps, she was. So very timid, as if the world were a steep, descending staircase into a dungeon. I was helping her see that there was a garden below. I was helping her walk to it. We were…we…”

  As I wait for his tears to end, I consider the impossibility of a shy girl found naked with my uncle after making love.

  Manuel suddenly says in a limp voice, “How was she killed? Was she violated by the Christians?”

  “I don’t know if she was raped. I don’t think so. But, Manuel, her throat was cut.”

  “Dear God…” His buries his head in his hands for a time. When he looks up, he says, “I…I suppose you’ve already buried her.”

  “We couldn’t wait any longer. I’m sorry. At the Almond Farm. I will show you the exact spot when I can. And we will say a kaddish together for her. But do you have any idea what was she doing in my neighborhood?”

  “She left the house on Sunday to visit Tomás, her brother. He lives near you. She must have run from the mob and found her way to your place by accident.”

  “Did she know my uncle?” I ask.

  “She knew of him, of course. But they never met that I know of.”

  “How about any of the members of Uncle’s threshing group… Diego, Father Carlos?”

  “I don’t think she’d even heard of them.”

  “And did she consider herself a Jew?”

  He shakes his head. “Not really. Mosaic law about the mother having to be Jewish and all that. Her mother’s Old Christian, was born in Segovia, but has lived in Lisbon since she was little. A peasant really. But don’t try to tell her that. Teresa’s father is a Portuguese New Christian from Chaves. When she decided to marry me, they refused to have anything to do with her. So what do I do? I get a card of pure blood. Logical, no? Does the old whore care? She tells me that a Jew is like a pomegranate because the blood inside always stains what it touches. She has an answer for everything. Like the Devil.” Manuel stands, twists his face away in anguish. “And your uncle, he never understood the pressure I was under.”

  “Manuel, Master Abraham is dead, too.”

  He starts, leans toward me. His eyes show panic.

  I nod to assure him it’s the truth. “Aunt Esther was violated and will not speak. Judah is still missing. And Uncle is with us no longer. Mother, Cinfa and Reza are safe.”

  Manuel turns around to hide his tears. Or is it his prior knowledge?

  “Master Abraham never did forgive me then,” comes his whisper.

  I ask, “Was his forgiveness that important?”

  Manuel whips around and glares at me as if it is criminal to pose such a question. “Berekiah, a card from the King doesn’t remove your heart!”

  “I did speak to him about you. After we were so rude on the street. He said he would honor you the next time you met. Hate for the concept of pure blood carried him away. He knew that he had acted wrongly. You had his full blessings.”

  Manuel’s eyes drip silent tears. He picks up the halves of his mother’s jug. “How did the Christians find him? Didn’t he get out with you?”

  I consider trying to trick him, but decide that the truth is riddle enough. As I describe the bodies, he hides his face in his hands again. “It’s impossible!” he says. He moans the word over and over until his voice becomes a whisper disappearing into an ocean of silence.

  I come to him and say, “We must find out exactly how she got to our cellar. Perhaps her brother can tell us.”

  “If he’s still alive.”

  As we walk toward Tomás’ apartment, Manuel whispers his wife’s name as if in incantation. He hides behind an expression of rigid control, grips his sword handle. It is all wrong for him. Instead of polished iron, Manuel should have gone out into the world brandishing a butterfly net and notebook.

  Our destination is the third floor of a squalid townhouse in the poor neighborhood below the hillock crowned by St. Steven’s Church. Brittle bells are tolling vespers when we arrive, and Old Christians are shuffling inside. A caretaker is shooing away a pack of prancing dogs who want to join in services. Sunset has lit the horizon. The dark of the sixth evening of Passover is almost within reach.

  Manuel’s brother-in-law, a pillow-maker’s assistant, is stuffing feathers into netting when we arrive. His garret smells like a chicken coop. He has no neck, red-veined cheeks like Father Carlos, a receding fringe of dirty brown hair. He wears a bull’s expression of unknowing, obsessive rage, takes the news without looking up. A brief pause in his hand motion is all.

  “She said she was going out,” he says. “She was complaining of uncleanliness, the time of women’s pain.”

  I motion Manuel outside; we have learned all we need to know.

  “What do you know of that man?” I question.

  “You need to ask? The half that is Christian has the manners and intelligence of a swine. You can imagine how crazy that makes the half that is Jewish. Teresa must have been adopted. It’s the only explanation.”

  When I look up, Tomás is moving back from his window. Could he have followed his sister and killed them both out of some half-formed sense of religious righteousness bequeathed by his mother? Could he and a thresher entrusted with the secret of our genizah have come to kill my uncle at exactly the same moment? Was such a coincidence possible?

  Two feathers float down toward us. I reach out for one. “I think Teresa considered herself more Jewish than you think,” I say, gripping it tightly. To Manuel’s puzzled look, I ask, “Where does a Jewish woman go who has just finished her rhythm with the moon?”

  “To a bathhouse,” he replies.

  “And where’s the nearest bathhouse?”

  “On the Rua de São Pedro. Just down the street from your…”

  “Exactly.”

  Chapter X

  Our synagogue in the Judiaria Pequena was built in the Christian year of thirteen seventy-four on a tiny hillock flanking the southern rim of Lisbon’s ancient defensive walls. At the bottom of this slope is a tiny square centered by a great pear tree, a brother to the towering giant which used to shade the yard of our central temple in Little Jerusalem. A staircase of polished limestone rises twenty feet from the tree’s octopus-tangle of roots to Samuel Aurico’s tannery on the first floor and another fifteen to the synagogue on the second.

  On the other side of the synagogue runs the Rua de São Pedro. It was here that our ancestors put the entrance to our micvah, a series of cascading pools—two for ritual bathing—carved out of the rock below and gifted with an underground stream as a source. Some nimble negotiation by Rabbi Zacuto and other Court Jews spared it from the mass confiscations of fourteen ninety-seven and enabled our chazan, David Moses, to remain as manager. Of course, our men and boys were no longer expected to immerse themselves in its waters before the Sabbath. But I’ve persisted. After all, a bath is pretty much a bath, and presumably even the Pope cannot prove what’s in one’s head. Now, of course, all that has changed; Portuguese curses have been strung into rope around our wrists, and proof no l
onger counts for anything. Throughout Spain, bathing on Friday has been declared enough evidence to turn a man to smoke. That Lisbon has begun to welcome the heat of this Inquisitional fire has become only too clear over the last week.

  Naturally, our women have been similarly proscribed since the time of the conversion from purifying themselves after the moon has summoned the red of their tides. But Teresa, Manuel’s wife, was apparently more faithful and courageous than he ever imagined. Was she surprised by Old Christians as she bathed? Possibly, she slipped away without time to dress and raced down the street to find safety in our house; it is only four doors east of the micvah, at the triangular corner the Rua de São Pedro makes with Temple Street, the Rua da Sinagoga.

  The bathhouse door is locked, and no one answers our knocks. “I don’t think Master David survived Sunday,” I tell Manuel, and I explain to him how the chazan failed to meet me that afternoon at St. Anne’s Gate.

  Despite my words, Manuel calls to him in the crack of the doorway. The sixth evening of Passover has already descended gray and windblown over the city, and dust is kicking up from the cobbles in swirling sheets. Manuel covers his nose with his hand and kicks at the door with his foot. There comes no response. He asks, “Where to, now?”

  “His apartment,” I answer. “I know where he keeps his keys.”

  As we head off, he says, “I never understood why Master Abraham always treasured living so close to the bathhouse and synagogue. The way he and Rabbi Losa always fought, I mean. It seemed only to make things worse.”

  “Uncle always said that our location was prime for disappearing into God. The Rua de São Pedro and Rua da Sinagoga come together at our house. He maintained that a kabbalist should try to live at an intersection of lines—‘where two become one.’”

  “I suppose it’s a blessing to be sure that life’s made up of definite and discernable patterns,” Manuel notes with a wistful smile, and in his tone I can tell that he, too, is questioning God.

  We climb up a side street to the chazan’s apartment and knock on his door. Perched on the eaves of his townhouse roof is an escaped hunting falcon, wary and fitful, a leather strap dangling from its right talon. When a gangly woman with a pointed chin hails us from upstairs, the bird takes wing. “We are all God-fearing Christians here,” the woman says in a trembling voice. “Old Christians, every one of us, with the Lord Jesus risen in our hearts.” She brings her hands together in front of her chest in a position of prayer.

  Even from here, I can see that she has bitten her nails bloody. She must think that we, too, are on the hunt for Marranos. “We’re simply looking for Master David,” I say in a reassuring voice. “Nothing is wrong. We just want to know if you’ve seen him.”

  “Oh dear, I knew it. But you won’t find him here. I haven’t seen him since Sunday. I believe that he was scheduled that day to warm the heart of God himself from the pyre in the Rossio.”

  Scheduled that day to warm the heart of God? Often, in their effort to speak euphemistically, Lisboners gave voice to the most absurd and monstrous expressions. Was there any people on earth more capable of turning a scorpion into a rose with their tongues?

  I ask, “Do you have the key to his apartment, by any chance?”

  “Yes, yes, I do,” she replies.

  “Can we take a look?”

  “Give me a minute and I’ll help you.”

  She comes downstairs smoothing the front of her black smock with nervous hands. Her gaze will not rise to meet my own. She says in a hesitant voice, “When we first met Senhor David, we thought he was so gentlemanly. That’s why we kept him as a tenant. Later, of course, we found out that he was just a Marrano. He assured us that he would be moving out by the end of this very month.”

  In her pathetic way, she is trying to distance herself from her tenant. In a reassuring voice, Manuel says, “He was the local chazan, you know.” He utters these specific words because he suspects—as I do—that she is terrified because she has a Jewish background as well. His use of the Hebrew word “chazan” is his way of letting her know that we, too, know Hebrew—that we are New Christians who mean her no harm.

  Due to a similarity of sound, however, the woman confuses “chazan” with the Portuguese word for a bad omen or instance of ill luck, azango. With a great nod, she replies in an excited voice, “Yes, yes, your excellency is right—all the Jews are azango!”

  A week earlier and we’d have laughed at her ignorance. As it is, we both inhale deeply as if bracing ourselves for a fight that may last our lifetimes. Emboldened by the solidarity which she believes that she has elicited from us, she rushes to open the door. “Got it!” she says as the lock clicks. When the door squeals open, a foul smell wafts out. She says in a humble voice, “If you would only stay a few minutes, I would be most appreciative.” She meets my gaze for but a moment. “I don’t mean to be rude, dear sirs, but the stars and planets say that we’re not to have strangers in our townhouse today. I’m sure you understand.”

  A worn leather runner leads from Master David’s entrance to his cold hearth, five paces of a man distant. But we daren’t move; all along its length, the precious ouds and lutes of Davids collection lie gutted and shredded. A cittern banded with the most beautiful rose and cherrywood, like an agate carved for music, has been broken in half and dangles from a hook on the mantle like a dead crab. Below it sits a small mound of broken glass and ceramic potsherds topped by a tangle of phylacteries which will never again feel the pulse of any arm. The landlady points a stern finger toward us. “You should have seen it before I cleaned up. His fava beans were growing gray beards. Like their rabbis! And the stink… Lord, his people smell, don’t they?”

  “Just tell me if you’ve seen his clogs,” I say.

  She smooths the front of her smock again. “I’m afraid I don’t keep track of his things. We were not friendly. In fact, we never even…”

  I head to his clothes chest as she babbles on about the cold distance she insisted on maintaining from the “musical little Jew,” as she now refers to David. His clogs are huddling together below a jumble of dated velvet caps from the time of King João. With a little prompting and silent cursing in Hebrew, the heel swivels open and three keys fall out. The landlady gapes. I say, “For four years, long before you moved here, I studied the Greek and Arabic modes with David right in this room. Couldn’t you tell by my odor?”

  “Ah, I understand,” she whispers with an urgent inhale of breath. A grudging admiration deepens her voice as she says, “You people disguise yourselves well.”

  “It’s no disguise,” I say, “it’s magic!” Remembering an old trick taught to me by Uncle, I show her an empty hand, then pull David’s keys from out of her nostrils.

  She gasps and crosses herself, falls to the ground in a position of prayer. “I beg you do me no harm,” she moans, tears gushing in her eyes.

  I say, “If the ‘musical little Jew’ should return, just tell him that Pedro Zarco has visited.”

  “Yes, senhor,” she says, making a little bow with her head. “But I’m afraid that it would be better to tell him in your dreams tonight. That’s the only way your excellency is likely to get a message through at this point.”

  The micvah is damp and slimy, and its windows have been nailed shut by some thoughtful Jew. As we descend, I lose my footing in the pure darkness. My behind is rudely introduced to the granite edge of a stair, and a raw pain stabs my shoulder. I cry out.

  “I better get an oil lamp before you do yourself some serious damage,” Manuel says. He climbs back up and out into evening, eases the door closed behind him.

  As I sit inside the comfort of the black solitude, violet shapes condense, only to then shrink away into spotted shadows. “The lathe of darkness gives form to our wishes and fears,” I hear my uncle say. So I wait. Framed by my soft breathing, Mordecai appears in his youth, then dances away on fawn’s feet. A creak tugs me back from daydream. I jump up. A footstep? My heart pounds a code of warning. M
y uncle suddenly rises, blue with flecks of gold, an illumination painted by my memory. His expression is hesitant, pensive, as if he is considering the meanings of a difficult verse. Instead of stopping to greet me, he continues floating up and out into the false night of ceiling until he is gone.

  Pay it no mind, I think. It is not a vision, but only an illusion.

  Faint breathing from below prompts me forward. Or is it only the wind threading through an unseen shaft of cave? It is said there are a dozen different tunnels and borings that meet and surface here, the remnants of a subterranean network created by our ancestors in preparation for the Messiah. I call in Portuguese, “Judeu ou Cristão?” It seems to be the only question that matters anymore.

  The breathing is gone. “I come in peace,” I say.

  Expectant silence returns my fear. I decide to ask the darkness a riddle; a Jew will know my meaning. “Who is the angel that offers his hands to Abraham?” The answer is “Raziel”; both his name and that of Abraham add up to two hundred and forty-eight in Hebrew, a language in which letters are also numbers. Raziel’s hands are the equal sign that links them.

  I ease two steps up the stairs in case a shadow should lunge for the source of my voice. But no movement pierces the darkness. I ask my riddle again, climb still higher. A door creaks open, a flame from above lights Manuel’s face. The staircase below opens gray before me.

  “Sorry I took so long,” he says. “No one…”

  “Sshhh…I think someone’s here. I’ve heard breathing, a step I think.”

  He tiptoes down to me. “Jew or Christian?” he whispers.

  “A footstep has no faith.”

  “So what is…”

  “Raziel,” comes a hoarse whisper. “…Raziel.”

  “What’s he saying?” Manuel asks.

  I put my finger to my lips to request silence. “Show yourself,” I call below in Hebrew.