The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon

by Richard Zimler

  Perhaps so. But what defines his inner being? Is he the Wandering Jew in person, a terrified being somehow less than human, ready for the next migration to yet another hostile land? Is that what we’ve all become, characters defined by Christian mythology?

  As we reach my house, little Didi Molcho comes running to us from our gate. He shouts, “I’ve found him, Beri! I’ve found him!”

  “Who?”

  “Rabbi Losa!”

  “Where is he?!” I demand.

  “In the micvah. Murça Benjamin is being married.”

  “What….now? It was to be tomorrow. It must be long after midnight. And it’s still the Sabbath!”

  He whispers, “To fool the Christians, the wedding has been changed to tonight.”

  We walk together to the courtyard. Father Carlos comes out to meet us. He, Didi, Diego, Farid and I stand by the stump of our felled lemon tree. I say, “I must confront Rabbi Losa, make sure he’s got nothing to do with this. I’ll be back soon.”

  Everyone begins to raise their voices against me. “It’s too dangerous for Jews to meet together in ritual,” Diego concludes, speaking for all of them. “What if the Christians find you?!”

  My distrust of Losa is so complete that I cannot resist the urge to confront him. “Even so,” I say, “I must go. Besides, there is nothing we can do about Queen Esther and Zerubbabel in the night. At dawn, I will begin to draw them out of hiding.”

  I leave my friends for the micvah and Murça Benjamin’s marriage ceremony. As a childless widow, she has been obliged by the law of Levirite marriage to wed her late husband’s elder brother now that he has chosen to take her as his bride.

  A weedy man whose face is hidden in a cowl guards the bathhouse door. “May I go in?” I ask. “I’m a friend of Murça’s.”

  “Hurry.”

  The stairs are lit by wall torches. A small gallery of witnesses draped in cloaks of fluttering shadow and light is assembled in the central chamber, men in front, women behind. But as I descend, I notice that something is amiss. Rabbi Losa sits at the center of a tribunal of five judges. He starts as if burned when he spots me. His wicked eyes show cold dread. Rage presses into my groin, hot and demanding.

  And yet, what is happening? Murça stands opposite her brother-in-law, Efraim. Her hair has been gathered up under a burlap headscarf. Her face is drawn, hopeless, and her hands are trembling. A black ceramic plate rests on the ground between them. The halizah! Oh God, when will Thy mercy ever reach us? After the riot against the Jews, Efraim must have reneged on his agreement to marry. We are well along in the ceremony that will free him from this duty. As for Murça, she, too, will be liberated. But into what future? With little dowry and half the Jewish youths of Lisbon gone to ash, her chances of finding the happiness she deserves are slim.

  Efraim announces his refusal to marry Murça in a judgmental voice. In quivering, hesitant syllables, Murça replies in Hebrew, “Me’en yeba-mi lehakim leahiv shem beyisrael lo aba yabmi,” then repeats her words in Portuguese so all may understand: “My husband’s brother has refused to establish a name in Israel for his brother and does not wish to marry me in the Levirite marriage.” A sigh comes from deep in her gut as she finishes.

  “Do you understand what she said?” Rabbi Losa asks Efraim.

  “Yes.”

  The judges rise. Murça trudges toward Efraim, crouches, and with her right hand alone begins to undo the leather sandal straps circled three times around his right calf. Her agonized breaths scrape the air. When the laces finally dangle free, she raises his foot and slips off his shoe. Lifting herself up, she reaches back for leverage and throws the sandal to the ground between Efraim and the judges.

  Rabbi Sabah nudges Losa and whispers in his ear; the traitorous lout has forgotten his place in the ceremony because of his fear of me. In a rushed voice, he says to Efraim, “Take a look at the spittle which is coming out of her mouth until it reaches the ground.”

  Murça trembles, manages with great effort to lean over and spit into the black plate to symbolically humiliate her brother-in-law for refusing to give her children.

  Defiant, Efraim retrieves his sandal and hands it to Rabbi Losa as if serving a summons. All five judges intone in unison: “May it be God’s will that the daughters of Israel will never come to need the halizah or the Levirite marriage.”

  The ceremony over, Murça melts to the floor. As the women rush to her, Losa breaks for the stairs. All rabbis know how to kill like a shohet! I think. He was the one blackmailing Uncle’s smugglers. That is why God meant for me to attend this halizah!

  I push past the men of the gallery, rush up after him. Outside, I spot him lumbering toward his house. In a moment, I have reached him. My hands form fists around the silk of his collar. When I shove him against the wall of Samir’s house, I say, “A great scholar and rabbi of rabbis like you should not be in such a hurry to leave.”

  He pushes back at me. “Let me pass, you little catamite.”

  “You mistake me for Farid, a lover of men whose name you are unequal even to pronounce.”

  “Would you beat me right in the street in front of everyone?” He looks around to force me to consider the small crowd that has gathered.

  “I might,” I say. “I care not what the others think of me. But I will be fair. I will not kill you for your crimes against your people, only if I find you murdered my uncle.”

  “Murdered your uncle? Me?!”

  “Is that so astounding? You betrayed him! You dare deny it? You took out your shohet’s blade and slit his throat!”

  “I do indeed deny it. Of course, we disliked each other. But there is a Red Sea between hate and murder. And I have not crossed it.”

  “Where were you the Sunday of the riot?” I demand.

  “In my home praying. One of my daughters is ill.”

  “To God or to the Devil?”

  “May a wild boar press its tongue into…”

  I knock his head against the whitewashed wall. He shrieks, groans. “And witnesses?!” I ask.

  “Both my daughters were there with me!”

  “All day?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why did the Dominicans spare you?”

  He shouts, “I work for the Church now, you fool!”

  “Are your daughters at home?”

  “Don’t you dare…”

  A week of little sleep and food is beginning to take its toll on my reasoning and balance. I tug the terrified rabbi down the Rua de São Pedro toward his house. A retreating part of me realizes that I have let my desperation get the better of me. Am I afraid to see the truth, to string all the clues together into an easily understood verse? They are all safely placed in my Torah memory: White Maimon of the Two Mouths; Diego’s stoning; the shohet’s slashing cut across my uncle’s neck; the letters from Tu Bisvat. If they were citations from Torah or kabbalah, I could weave them together into a sensible commentary, an answer. Am I simply afraid to end the journey toward vengeance and pass through the final Gate of Emptiness beyond my master’s death?

  Chapter XVIII

  According to kabbalah, honey has one-sixtieth the sweetness of manna; dream one-sixtieth the power of prophesy; the Sabbath one-sixtieth the glory of the world to come.

  And the sleep of sickness, what is its fraction of death?

  Rachel, Rabbi Losa’s youngest daughter, lies under a woolen blanket, on her side, the back of her hand curled like a flipper over her forehead as if she is seeking protection from an ogre. Her eyes are closed, but every few seconds she shudders, seeming to cast away an inner damp. Esther-Maria, her older sister, sits vigil at the end of the bed with the worry-reddened eyes of failing resolve. A chaplet threads through her fingers. She nods up at me as those beyond speech do, acknowledging kinship yet distance.

  I consider the failure of the child’s body as if aligned to Efraim’s denial of Murça. The broken promises of betrayal seem to be the binding glue that seals all our lives together.
/>   “How long has she been like this?” I ask.

  “Since last Friday,” Esther-Maria replies. “But at first it wasn’t so bad.”

  “And was your father with her all day Sunday?”

  “This is preposterous!” Losa bellows. “Asking my own…”

  Esther-Maria raises her hand to quiet her father. “Yes,” she whispers. “All day and night.”

  She stands, presses her fists into an ache in her lower back. I say, “I’m asking because my uncle, he was…”

  She nods. “We’ve all heard. You don’t need to explain. Look, when the Old Christians came, we stayed here and hid. Father said we’d be spared, but how can killers be trusted? Until…was it Tuesday? I can’t seem to recall days very well.”

  I turn to Rabbi Losa. “Then why didn’t you let me in when I came for you before? Or stop by my house? And just now in the micvah, when you…”

  “Are you delirious?! You were kicking down my door. I had a sick child here. Everyone knows you wish to avenge your uncle. And now, if you… Wait…” Losa marches across the room, unhooks a tarnished mirror from the wall and carries it to me. “Look!” he demands. “Wouldn’t you run from this?”

  In the faded silver, by the dim candlelight, a drawn and debased figure with lichenous stubble on his cheeks sprouts wild and filthy hair.

  “You’re right,” I admit. “I’m quite a sight.” I take out from my pouch my drawing of the waif who tried to sell Uncle’s Haggadah. “Do either of you recognize this boy?”

  Esther-Maria studies him as she leans into the aureole circling the candle flame. “No,” she says. She hands it to her father. He shakes his head.

  To the rabbi, I say, “Then you never helped my uncle smuggling Hebrew books?” When he shakes his head, I add, “You must swear it on the Torah.”

  As he swears, Rachel wheezes in her sleep like a torn bellows. “May I touch her?” I ask.

  Losa nods. The pulse in her wrist races. Her forehead burns, but curiously, she does not sweat. “What other symptoms does she have?” I ask.

  “She cannot eat,” Esther-Maria says. “And she bleeds from her bowels when she…” The girl leans toward me, and her expectant eyes show that my interest has unintentionally offered her hope.

  “It’s either dysentery or the Spanish rash,” I say. “Spread by the foul air and muck.” Passages from Avicenna trail across the pages of my Torah memory. “Boxwood tea with vervain, and plenty of it,” I say. “She needs liquid to sweat out her tumors. And give her enemas of arsenic diluted with pomegranate juice and water. Not too much of the poison, though. A few drops at the most.” Losa peers at me over the tip of his flattened, owlish nose with a look that could make even a prophet itch. And yet, after all that’s happened, his pose strikes me as humorous rather than insolent. “Save your foolish looks for Sabbath services,” I tell him.

  “No more such services,” he says sadly. “Never again.”

  “Just as well,” I sneer.

  “What would you know?!” he shouts. “What did you give up but your Jewish name?! Did you take a vow never to set foot in a synagogue again if the Lord would save our community? Did you give up what you held dearest? What would you know of sacrifice?! You were an eleven-year-old boy. Yes, I remember you clinging to your father. And you remember me racing to the baptism font. Did you ever ask why? Did your uncle? Can you understand that it was to prevent more of us from dying or killing our children. I’d made a pact with our Lord—save the Jews of Lisbon and I will convert. Was it wrong? Who can say? Can you?! Can your uncle?!”

  Losa wipes spittle from his mouth with his sleeve, glares at me with years of rage burning red on his cheeks.

  Esther-Maria comes to him. Caressing his shoulder, she whispers, “Calm yourself, Father.”

  “My uncle is dead and cannot say anything,” I answer in a calm dry voice which belies my anger. “And if I were a more faithful kabbalist than I am, perhaps I wouldn’t judge you. Maybe you did betray us for a higher loyalty. Or maybe that’s what you’ve told yourself so you can go on living. Anyway, your motives don’t matter to me anymore. It’s your actions which counted so many years ago, that count now I am learning that for men like you and me, our acts are more important than our words, than all our secret pacts and whispered prayers. For Uncle, I think it was different. His chanting summoned angels into this world. For men of wonders like that…” My words fade; Rabbi Losa, bloated with fury, has turned away. Talk seems pointless. I brush Esther-Maria’s shoulder to fix her attention. “Keep Rachel washed with rosewater boiled with vervain and egg yolk. And for God’s sake, change these foul sheets. Or better still, burn them!” I hold my hand over her head and bless her.

  “Will my sister die?” she asks.

  “Only He can say,” her father intones. His pious look upward toward the Christian heaven is meant to remind me of the sacrifice he claims to have made.

  “Probably she will,” I answer with the callous tone of a challenge; at this point, affirmations of the existence of a cloud-dwelling God guarding over us seem cruel and absurd. Yet for Esther-Maria, for myself, I add, “But if you do as I say, she has a chance.”

  The girl nods her thanks. Rabbi Losa pulls in his chin as he’s always done in my presence and suffers my bow of goodbye with disdain. I amble home looking at the jagged constellations quilting the sky, knowing at long last that he, and all the self-righteous rabbis the world over, have lost their power over me. Forever. That, too, has been the journey this Passover.

  Whenever you think you’ve recognized the true form of a verse from Torah, it has a way of shedding its clothes to reveal inner layers. So, too, the events of everyday life.

  Diego, Father Carlos and Farid meet me in the kitchen with a letter from Solomon Eli, the mohel with whom we discovered the secret entrance from our home to the bathhouse. “Berekiah Zarco” is scribbled on coarse, badly made linen paper whose surface is pressed with an arc.

  “While you were gone, we got some bad news,” Diego says. “Solomon the mohel was found hanging by his tallis from the rafters of his home. Suicide. Farid, Carlos and I went there. He left this note for you.”

  “But he’d survived!” I shout. My words fall hollow between us. What, after all, is the endurance of the body compared to the decay of a grieving soul? “The note’s not sealed,” I observe. “And he wrote my given name, Berekiah. He never called me that. I was ‘Shaalat Chalom.’”

  “It was the way it was handed to us,” Carlos shrugs.

  “By whom?”

  “His sister, Lena,” Diego answers. “Apparently, she found the body, and while going through his things, she found the note.”

  Master Solomon’s words to me are written in a hurried, childlike script, framed inside a circular impression pressed into the paper:

  “Does one’s training as a mohel make one callous to the pain of the flesh? I did it. That is proof of something. My body is slack. The New World will never feel my footsteps. Too many discoveries in this century. It is good for some things to remain hidden. I informed on New Christians. On Reza, too. I had to, really. The threat of pinga is a burning shadow, and the body is a terrible coward when clothed in darkness. A single drop of oil sends it racing toward screams that curl from the bowels like shedding snakes and… Master Abraham swore that he would have me judged at a Jewish Tribunal. That he would find a way to see me punished. We argued that Sunday morning. Fear. He must have smelled it on me. He said, ‘You carry a knife, and yet you are terrified.’ He smiled as if to welcome me to his home. ‘Your iron blade will anneal me to God and maybe even serve a higher purpose, but the girl is not yet ready. Solomon, leave her be and I will come to you like a bride.’ But a girl breathes Inquisitional fires as well as a man. To be like Adam…if only I could. I didn’t intend to take his life. Or that of the girl. I cannot ask your forgiveness or the forgiveness of Esther and Mira, but when I am gone, please say a kaddish for me so that I may leave the Lower Worlds. Will there be peace for such a man
as I? A blessing for you, Solomon.”

  “What’s it say?!” Diego demands as I read.

  My lips are sealed together by the jagged confession and its flaws. The suicide explains the book he left for me as a gift. But why the sudden doubt of the profession he loved? Why no mention of his wife? Was there no clarity to his final moment?

  Is this, then, a forgery scripted by Zerubbabel and Queen Esther? Do they suspect that I am walking within their shadows?

  “How long had he been dead when his sister found him?” I signal to Farid.

  “She said she found him this morning. But the note only just now. She hadn’t the strength to go through his possessions any sooner.”

  “What are you two signalling about?” Carlos demands. “And what’s it say, damn you?!”

  After I read Solomon’s words aloud, Farid takes the note from me and sniffs at it, licks its edge. “Very cheap quality,” he says.

  “As a mohel, Solomon was very skillful with knives,” Carlos observes.

  “It might explain things,” Diego adds. “We certainly never suspected he was working with Master Abraham. That’s just the way they both would have wanted it.”

  He’s right. And yet, could Gemila have mistaken a balding, olive-skinned finch of a man for White Maimon of the Two Mouths? And for what reason would he have hired a Northerner to kill Simon and Diego?

  “You have opened another gate,” I hear Uncle tell me. “Now, Berekiah, fill your lungs with the breath of the Lower Realms and jump through before it has a chance to bang closed.”

  I take the letter back from Farid. My pounding feet lead me to the cellar so that I can meditate upon its script. “Alone,” I whisper, and Farid lets my hand slide from his.

  Downstairs, I take Uncle’s topaz signet ring from the storage cabinet and slip it onto my right index finger. I sit on our prayer mat above his bloodstains. After opening the doors of my mind with patterned breathing exercises, I transpose the scripted letters of Solomon’s note using the monotone of chant. When his words lift from the paper and twist like a juggler’s rings in the air, they shed their meaning as unnecessary weight. My arms and legs grow light with grace.