The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon

by Richard Zimler

  Back in the central square, neither a soap seller nor a basketmaker knows where Miguel Ribeiro keeps his horses. “Don’t you mind that your blacksmith shows himself?” I ask, pointing down the dusty street.

  “It’s good for business,” the soapseller observes. “People come from all around to see it. ‘The Basque blacksmith who’s larger than his horses!’”

  A gorse peddler joins our conversation and informs me that there are several stables along the road to Sintra, so I head through the town’s western gate. After a long row of sumac bushes, a dirt road opens to the north fronted by a chapel to the Virgin Mary. A mouse of a woman enfolded in black prays on her knees to the benevolent effigy. The Nazarene child, in Mary’s hands, looks fragile and solitary. The supplicant turns to me with a delicate face betokening warmth. “Saint Anthony once prayed here,” she says.

  If you added up all the Old Christian claims for their Saint Anthony, you quickly came to the conclusion that he covered more territory on his knees than Dias, da Gama and Columbus in all their ships combined. “Then it is a very holy shrine,” I reply in a gentle voice, crossing myself. “Tell me, senhora, do you know where Dom Miguel Ribeiro might have his stables?”

  “I believe it’s just down this road,” she answers, pointing to the north. “On the left after another two hundred yards. First you’ll pass the stream where the Melo boy drowned in the flood a few years back, then that series of granite boulders which Father Vasco says was a temple to witches in the time before He was born. A little ways after that.”

  I cross myself again and thank her. The landmarks appear just as she said. A humid, putrid scent begins to waft toward me, however. It grows sickening just as I cross the gnarled shadow of a giant oak on which is carved the hollow-eyed skull usually painted above the doors of leper houses. A hare, quick as fear, suddenly darts across my feet. All my senses attuned to the present, I step over a cartwheel abandoned in the middle of the road. On the west side of the road, a grove of orange trees gives way to grasses, and I spot the stables—six arcades flanking a white and blue farmhouse. A low stone wall borders the property. The wooden gate which gives entry is unlocked, squeals open to my touch. Halfway up the dirt path, I call, “Dom Miguel! I am Master Abraham’s nephew. I mean no harm!”

  My voice seems to cut dangerously at the rotting air. Only the dull, staccato rapping of a woodpecker from a long ways off dares enter the ensuing silence. I cross the dry field fronting the stables fighting the urge to retch, breathe as lightly as I can. All but one of the sheds is empty. In it is the source of the maleficent odor; an eyeless horse being eaten away by waves of squirming maggots.

  The front door of the house is locked. A muffled voice comes to me just as I touch the knocker. My hand peels open my pouch, creeps around the base of Farid’s dagger. The door opens, and a gaunt, beak-nosed man in a rough linen cloak steps out. He points a crossbow at my heart. “Old or New Christian?!” he demands.

  “Old,” I answer.

  Two more men emerge from the house. Arms grip me from behind, tear open the ache in my shoulder. “Filho da puta! Son of a whore!” a voice spits in my ear.

  Using the Hebrew for whore, I say, “If my mother were a zonà, I’d be dressed a lot better than I am!”

  “What was that?” The gaunt figure lowers his crossbow, steps to me.

  The blue and white fringes of his prayer shawl dangle below his cloak. “Your tzitzit are showing,” I say. “You’re not going to fool many people that way.”

  “I’m not aiming to fool anyone,” he says. “Jacob, let him go.”

  Set free, we bless each other and exchange names. “I’m looking for Dom Miguel Ribeiro,” I explain. “Is this his stables?”

  “Yes,” he answers, unfurling his arm toward the door.

  Inside, a man only slightly older than me, with spiky black hair and several days’ growth of beard shadowing his cheeks, sits on the floor at the back of the foyer. He wears a blue brocade doublet that is open at the collar, leather riding pants torn at his thigh, the coarsest of Alentejo boots. The heel of one is missing. Offering me a nod of acknowledgment, he stands and walks toward me, limping a bit because of the missing heel.

  “Dom Miguel Ribeiro?” I ask.

  He nods. I begin to introduce myself, but the beak-nosed guard with the crossbow now standing at my side exclaims, “He’s Abraham Zarco’s nephew!”

  Dom Miguel’s eyes open wide and he takes my hands. His touch is frigid. “Come!” he says, his voice quivering with eagerness. He leads me to a warm kitchen smelling of grilled meat, and we sit alone at a granite table by a hearth of snapping embers. “Where’s your uncle?” he questions.

  When I tell him, he turns toward the wall and crosses himself.

  “Why did he visit you recently?” I ask.

  Dom Miguel continues to face away, however. So I say, “Maybe it’s my lack of sleep, but I’m confused. Do you know that you’re Jewish? Or, at least, that my uncle considered you so. Did that have something to do with his recent visit?”

  The nobleman jumps up suddenly and takes down a wine skin from a shelf above the mantle. He pours the burgundy liquid into two ceramic cups and dilutes them both with water. He hands me mine and says, “To your health,” then downs most of his in a single gulp. He drops heavily to his chair. “Drink!” he prompts with a twist to his hand, then quoting a famous Hebrew poem, adds, “‘Drink all day long, until the day wanes and the sun coats its silver with gold.’” As I take a sip, he observes, “Wine is the only thing keeping me going. By now, it’s replaced all my blood.” To my questioning eyes, he adds, “No, I don’t think I’m Jewish…not yet, but I’m learning. And that was indeed part of the reason for your uncle’s visit.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Me neither,” he laughs in a single, ironic exhale. “We’d have to ask your uncle again to be sure. And now, that’s impossible. But according to what he told me, I was born in Ciudad Real to Jewish parents. In the year fourteen eighty-two.” He snaps his fingers, “Gained two years just like that. A miracle of sorts. Your uncle said that in fourteen eighty-four my parents were burnt at the second auto-da-fe ever held in Ciudad Real.” He downs the last drops of his wine, scratches the whiskers on his chin. “Considered negativos, they were, since they refused to confess the names of other secret Jews. Your uncle, he said that he handled all the arrangements to have me smuggled into Portugal. He studied for a time with my father apparently, knew my parents well. He said that my mother forced him to pledge that I be raised a true Christian, that I not be told of my origins unless at some future date it were to become absolutely essential. Your uncle said that his attitude toward me at the time was, ‘As long as you’re going to be one of them, you might as well get the most out of it.’ So he waited until he found childless aristocrats who wanted a little boy to inherit their holdings and who wouldn’t ask too many questions about the baby’s circumcised sex. I only found this all out a week ago when your uncle came to my house to inform me that the Book of Psalms your aunt was scripting for me was almost finished.” Miguel pours us both more wine. “He gave me a letter signed by my adoptive father as proof.”

  “Why do you think my uncle told you now, after so many years?” I ask.

  “Don’t know.” He leans toward me and stares into my eyes as if trying to elicit a reassuring response. I shrug my inability to provide it. He belches loudly, looks away. “Berekiah, I’ve thought about this a lot,” he says without turning back. “Do you suppose that he knew the Old Christians would begin to kill the Jews of Lisbon…that he was worried for my safety?”

  “He had powers, but I…” A shiver snaking its way up my spine binds my words to silence.

  Miguel holds up his hands as if also unwilling to enter the dangerous territory of prophecy. “Anyway, I lost my temper. After so long, finding out… Now I wish I’d had the chance to ask him more. You see, when it comes down to it, I don’t doubt his word. I suppose that now I’ll never know more a
bout my real parents. Funny sometimes how understanding always arrives a little bit too late.” Two gulps and his new cup of wine is emptied. “Come,” he says, standing up. “I’ve some people I want you to meet.”

  As I stare into his drunken eyes, I realize that my master had presented this young nobleman with a dreaded truth. Was death his punishment for destroying an illusion?

  “First, some questions,” I say.

  “As you wish.” He bows forward, as if he’s my servant.

  “You say you were angry when he told you,” I begin.

  “Yes, wouldn’t you have been?” he replies.

  “For now, Dom Miguel, my hypothetical responses are irrelevant. Where were you Sunday when the riot began?”

  “Ah, I understand the direction of your questions.” He feigns pulling an arrow from his chest, laughs too deeply. “Very well. I was at home. Then, when the Dominicans started burning in the Rossio, I set out for here. Berekiah, I’d just been told I was a Jew. Wouldn’t you have…”

  “Who came with you?” I demand.

  “No one.”

  “Then you’ve no witness who can confirm your story.”

  Dom Miguel grins, straightens up and unfastens the thick laces of his leather codpiece with the heavy clumsiness given to him by a stomach sloshing with wine. He reveals his sex, lifts up the circumcised tip as if offering me a rose and says, “He’ll confirm my story!”

  “Not good enough. He can’t speak.”

  Dom Miguel laughs from his gut.

  I roll my eyes at the man’s drunken idiocy. Unconcerned, he begins to lace up his codpiece, his eyes squinting at his fingers as they stumble over their work. Finished, he drops to his chair with a great sigh, stares at me with a yearning expression for far too long, as if he’s trying to invade my thoughts. Everything about this debauched aristocrat irritates me. What I dislike most is that he hasn’t a clue as to who he really is.

  As if shot from an arrow, the thought comes to me: This is the man Uncle was referring to when he told me to beware of a courier who can’t recognize himself from one day to the next. Jumping up, I shout, “What would prevent you from killing my uncle with impunity?! You, a nobleman!”

  “Look, my friend,” he begins. “Would I kill the only man who could tell me the truth about my parents? If you believe that, you’re a fool!”

  “My uncle was the only one who knew you were a Jew…who could prove it! Kill him, and your secret is safe!”

  “Berekiah, do I need to show you my covenant with the Lord again? And others knew about it. A boy growing up with servants…people see. They don’t speak about it, but they see. In fact, my covenant is greater proof than all the documents in the King’s archives.” He stands, pounds his fist on the table. “I didn’t kill your uncle! If I did, then why don’t I kill you now?

  To this, I can come up with no reply worthy of speech.

  “Come with me!” he says. “I must show you something.”

  Dom Miguel leads me into a crowded sitting room. Tired-eyed men, women and children offer me solemn, acknowledging nods. Smiles blossom fleetingly, then dry and fade. My host whispers to me, “No need for fear, we are all New Christians here.” To them, he announces, “This is Berekiah, a friend from the Judiaria Pequena.”

  A dark, almond-eyed man with a scruffy beard dotted with oat flakes stands and asks, “Do you know Mira and Luna Alvalade? They must live near you.”

  “Yes, but I haven’t seen them lately,” I reply.

  “They’re my cousins. They…I…” His words trail off.

  “When I get back to Lisbon, I’ll try to find out how they are and get word to Dom Miguel.”

  “What about Dr. Montesinhos?” asks a handsome woman with a shawl of russet-colored lace wrapped protectively around her head.

  “I’m afraid he’s dead. I’m sorry.”

  In quivering voices, most of the others gather the courage to ask about friends and relatives. I dispense the news that I can, record the names in my Torah memory so that I can find out about them after I have disembarked fully on the shores of vengeance.

  Miguel takes my shoulder, whispers to me, “They’re all from Carnide and Pontinha and other nearby villages. When riots broke out, they came here for shelter. I spread the word that no one would be turned away, armed some of the men as soon as they got here.”

  “The horse in the stables?” I enquire.

  He grins. “Discourages both the curious and the enraged. Same with the skull carved on the tree.” Miguel belches again, hits himself in the chest. He unfurls his hand to indicate his guests and shakes his head. He whispers into my ear, “They don’t want to leave. One of these days, I suppose I’ll have to kick them out.”

  “And is there no more killing in Lisbon?” an intelligent-looking teenage girl suddenly asks me. For a moment, it seems as if God has chosen her to ask this question of me; the room becomes eerily silent. It’s as if we’ve become a congregation assembled to await an answer from the Lord himself. “Its reasonably safe,” I say. I know that this isn’t the answer they want, but it is all I have.

  “What does ‘reasonably’ mean anymore?!” the man with the scruffy beard demands angrily.

  “As safe as it’s going to be for a while,” I reply. “As safe as the world can be for Jews until the Messiah comes.”

  A murmur passes through the room as if I’ve now given the correct response. And yet, what if our faith in His coming is nothing but the hope of the forever shipwrecked?

  Miguel and I settle onto a rug by the hearth as the guests talk amongst themselves again. He whispers to me, “If I had killed your uncle, do you think I would have saved all these people?”

  “To atone for the sin of murder, you might save all Israel,” I reply.

  He closes his eyes tight, as if to shut out the world.

  I can see I’ve wounded him. But in my state, the anguish of strangers means little to me, and whatever sympathy beats in my heart doesn’t reach as far as my voice. “My uncle wrote you a letter,” I say dryly. “I brought it to your mansion last Sunday, but your servants said you were out. Uncle Abraham said for me to show it only to you.”

  My host opens his eyes. They are red and weary. “Did he tell you what it said?” he asks in a hopeless monotone.

  “The letter is guarded inside my memory,” I reply, and I repeat it to him, word for word.

  Inexplicably, he laughs from his gut when I’ve finished. “Your uncle asked whether I’d be interested in going into business with him,” he says. He stares at me as if surprised suddenly by my presence. “Yes, you are handsome. It would have been hard to have refused you. He was clever. What he asked had something to do with parcels. And the angel named Metatron mentioned in the letter. And trips to Genoa, I believe. Somewhere on the Italian peninsula. I’m sure I said ‘no,’ but I don’t really recall what exactly it was he was proposing. My mind was racing between the past and present. So many things began to make sense.” He grips my shoulder. “Berekiah, you know that moment when you stop translating a foreign language in your head and you understand the words without thinking? It was just like that. I suddenly understood the cool distance of my adoptive parents, their reticence to travel with me, the shadowed whispers behind closed doors as they put me to bed.”

  “So when the riot broke out, you…?”

  “I panicked. I mean, I had just found out that I was Jewish and then there’s this pyre in the Rossio rising toward the rooftops of Lisbon. It seemed like it was lit just for me. Strange the sensations you have when the past no longer is yours…when it’s been changed and your own history has been rewritten. So I rode out here.”

  “Did my uncle mention anyone else when he spoke with you… other names?”

  Dom Miguel shakes his head with exaggerated force.

  “No one else? A priest…other Jews? Think hard.”

  “I wasn’t paying much attention. He wanted me to travel for him. Because of my connections, it’s easy for me to get overse
as. To carry parcels for him. Yes, that was it! A correio, courier…that’s what he wanted me to be.”

  “He used that exact word, correio?” I ask.

  “Yes.”

  “And what were you to carry?”

  “Angels,” he said. Dom Miguel smiles. “Your uncle said, I remember now, that I would be carrying angels to safety. I had no idea what he meant.”

  “Hebrew manuscripts,” I say. “He probably didn’t want to tell you the whole truth until he discovered how you felt about being a Jew…where your allegiances would lie.”

  “I don’t understand…angels…books?”

  “Books are created from holy letters. Just as angels are, according to some. Viewed from this perspective—through a window of kabbalah, if you like—an angel is nothing but a book given heavenly form…given wings, to use a common metaphor. Apparently, you were to to be given the task of saving these winged manuscripts from flames. He didn’t want to call you a smuggler, used a more pleasant word—courier. Which I suppose must mean…” Speech gives way to greater understanding about the betrayal which led to Uncle’s death.

  “What?!” Dom Miguel demands.

  “Which means that someone who had been smuggling books with him was betraying him. The present correio. So my uncle needed to find a replacement. And he must have been desperate. That’s why he decided to risk revealing your Judaism to you. Perhaps the courier even knew of the location of our cellar and the genizah. Or maybe he worked with a thresher. Perhaps they hired the Northerner who has been watching for Diego Gongalves at his townhouse.” Dom Miguel’s puzzled expression shows me that I’ve confused him with my references. “It’s simple,” I say. “My uncle needed you precisely because his previously trusted courier had begun to betray him. How, I don’t know. Nor for what reason. But this courier, this smuggler, may be the key.”

  “And who has he been until now?” he asks.

  “I don’t know. But I’m going to find out!” I get to my feet. “I’ve got to get back to Lisbon now. Will you be here if I want to talk with you, or back at your palace?”