The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon (31 page)

“Now we have something,” he signals as he glances over the first letter, and he translates the important information it contains with rhythmic ease: “I have waited to write to you, Master Abraham, in the hopes that more
safira
would be arriving. But as there has been nothing of late, I am beginning to wonder. Has something happened to our
Zerubbabel
? Or perhaps you are ill. Please send me news. I begin to worry.”

There is a moment when the miniature world of a manuscript becomes real, when the contours of a prophet’s hands or twinkle in a heroine’s eyes glow again inside the eternal present that is Torah. A
similar
sentiment of time’s cessation captures me now, turns my vision inside. A path unfurls before me. It leads from Lisbon across Spain and Italy toward the Orient. Uncle walks along it, and he is carrying his beloved manuscripts, smiling with the joy of the gift-giver.

These images descend to me because this letter seems to make it clear that the path of my master’s smuggled books led to Constantinople. And that his accomplice in the Turkish capital,
Tu
Bisvat,
had not received scheduled shipments, was worried that
something
had befallen Uncle. This news must have alerted him to the
possibility
that he was being betrayed by one or more of his couriers. Probably, my master kept this information to himself until he could be sure of the criminal’s identity. And in the meantime, he went to see Dom Miguel Ribeiro to try to recruit a new accomplice who could carry manuscripts across Portugal’s borders with relative ease. When the nobleman refused to participate, Uncle wrote to Samson Tijolo, who, because of his wine business, might also have been able to obtain
permission
to travel abroad.

As for Zerubbabel, he was a character in the Book of Ezra, of course. It was under his leadership that Solomon’s Temple was rebuilt during the reign of King Darius of Persia.

But who was he in this context? A coded name for the man who delivered Uncle’s smuggled manuscripts to Constantinople?

In the second letter from
Tu
Bisvat,
the author makes reference to the
zulecha,
tile, that he is willing to buy for Uncle in Constantinople. “I don’t understand,” I tell Farid.

He signals, “In this context, I think it is a veiled reference to a
building
block for a home. Your uncle may have been negotiating to buy a house on the European side of the Bosporus—the
sunset
side of Constantinople.”

Chapter XV

To Farid, I signal, “So Uncle was planning all along to move, was
waiting
for the negotiations to be completed before telling us about Constantinople. Byzantium, imagine… A Moslem land. If only he’d shared this information with me. I’m sure we could have all worked harder to raise the money. But perhaps he feared being caught and then compromising.

The cascade of my surprised signalling is halted by Aunt Esther calling to me from the kitchen. “My God, her soul has returned to her body!” I whisper.

He reads my lips, gestures urgently, “Go to her! She may need you to pull her all the way back to our world!”

As I run in, I see that my aunt is not alone. She holds Cinfa in front of her like a human shield. An old man stands next to her. He is gaunt and tall, very pale, with spiky white hair and furry, caterpillar eyebrows. A man constructed from snow, it seems. Esther’s eyes follow me gravely. “You may remember Afonso Verdinho,” she says. “He was in Uncle’s threshing group.”

O
Sinistro
, the man from the left side, we used to call him with a certain ambivalent affection. It was a double entendre taken from the Italian language referencing Dom Afonso’s left-handedness and grim otherworldliness. Uncle liked him as a curiosity, used to say that he read the Torah as if it were fixed in fish glue—a consequence of the
uncompromising
asceticism he picked up while studying with Sufis in Persia. So where has it all gone? Now that I know his identity, he appears even older and more wilted, as if he has been starved and stretched in a
lightless 
chamber. Yellowing sweat stains show under the arms of his
crumpled
white shirt. A shabby black cloak lined with frayed blue silk hangs over his arm. As our eyes meet, his lips twist uncomfortably. Neither of us makes a move toward greeting.

“You remember him, don’t you?” Esther prompts. “You were but a boy when…”

“I remember him,” I answer curtly. A sense of imminent disaster fixes me as if in crystal.

“Berekiah, I’m going to stay with Afonso for a while,” she continues, speaking slowly and gently. “He rode here when word about the riot reached Tomar. He’s rented rooms at Senhor Duarte’s inn by Reza’s house. We’ll be there. Please tell your mother. I don’t want to wake her. But if she needs me, she can come for me.”

“I don’t understand,” I say.

My aunt reaches to her temples, rubs them as if trying to center scattering thoughts. Cinfa twists to gaze up at her, then bolts out of the house. Esther calls after her in vain.

Afonso’s expression becomes one of gentle compassion as he
whispers
to Esther in Persian. His protective arm circles her shoulders. He hugs her to him. To me, he says in a dry voice, “Just give your aunt some time. Try to understand that the journey is far more complex than you once thought.”

He leads Esther into the courtyard. Huddling together, they
disappear
through the gate. Jealousy, thick and hot as pitch, sluices through my chest; cruel is the knowledge that a virtual stranger could revive my aunt when I could do nothing.

And that she would abandon her family at this time—it seems impossible!

Dom Afonso…does his presence change everything? Could he have been involved in Uncle’s murder, in smuggling his books? But he moved from Lisbon prior to the forced conversion, long before my master and my father dug the
genizah.

An absurd disappointment buries itself in my gut, is linked to the knowledge that life is not a book, does not hold margin notes explaining difficult events. If it were, Dom Afonso would have remained seated in front of his fireplace in Tomar. His arrival only serves to complicate what is already out of my control.

I hear my uncle say:
dearest
Berekiah,
life
presents
us
with
many 
paths
leading
nowhere,
doors
opening
upon
sheer
drops,
staircases
ris
ing
to
locked
gates.
And I remember that he used to tell me that all life is a pilgrimage to the Sabbath.
Even
if
it
is,
I think,
then
nearly
all
of
us
take
the
most
circuitous
routes
trying
to
get
there.

I plod back to Farid. “People are very odd creatures,” I comment.

“Why? What happened?”

When I explain, he signals, “You don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?” I ask.

“They were lovers long ago. Samir told me.”

“Are you crazy, Afonso and…”

“It all ended years ago. It means nothing.”

His words are too simple to understand. The floor grows moist, slides away like sluicing floodwaters. Farid’s gesturing hands anchor me in a spinning world.

Could Esther have been involved in Uncle’s murder after all? Maybe in passing she divulged to Dom Afonso the existence of our
genizah.
He could have acted on his own out of continuing passion for her.

Farid senses my thoughts, signals, “A house of cards on a slanted table in a sandstorm.”

“Not if she didn’t know about Dom Afonso’s plans. Perhaps he hid his scheming from her. Even now, she doesn’t suspect that the man
giving
her solace is her husband’s murderer!”

“But from
Tu
Bisvat’s
letter, we know that one of Uncle’s smugglers was very likely to have been involved. Unless you can believe that Afonso was one of them…that he was Zerubbabel.”

Farid and I sit in an expanding silence for quite some time; I am still awe-struck by Esther’s departure. My friend signals to me from time to time, but I pay no attention until he grabs my arm. “Someone with a strange walk has entered the house,” he gestures. “I can feel the vibrations.”

A man calls my name suddenly from the kitchen. I rush in. The “dead” thresher and fabric importer Simon Eanes stands in the
doorway
, leaning heavily on his crutches, his time-worn mantle of charcoal velvet draped over his shoulders. He hasn’t shaved or bathed, and a large scab centers his forehead like a wounded eye. Cinfa is with him, is hugging him like an abandoned child. As he caresses his gloved hand across her hair, he offers me a nod of solidarity. “Berekiah, I heard about Master Abraham,” he says.

Involuntarily, I look at his foot to make sure that it is human. “You’re not dead,” I observe.

He shakes his head and smiles, a crazy smile, too wide, as if his lips have been pulled apart by a puppeteer working invisible strings.

The power of shared survival tethers us together, and I step toward him. But his gloves! The one covering his right hand is ripped across its back. Could the silk thread found under Uncle’s thumbnail really have been…. Wary, I hold myself back. He fixes another caricature of a grin on his face.

“Are you okay?” I ask. “What happened? Your landlord said….”

“Just fine,” he nods. “I told him to tell anyone enquiring after me that I was dead. It seemed safer at the time. Then I fled Lisbon. I’ve only just gotten back.”

Dearest
God,
I think,
will
Judah,
too,
return
from
the
dead?
Or
is
that
too
much
to
hope
for?

Simon accepts the stale matzah I offer with gracious bows. “Uncle is not the only thresher who died,” I say. “Samson, too.”

“I know. He had just visited my store. I told him to stay, to hide with me. But he wanted to get back to Rana and their baby. He was grabbed not fifty paces from the doorway…hadn’t a chance with those Christian rioters everywhere.”

My body seems very distant. I want to try to trick him, but all that emerges from my mouth is the truth. “Diego and Father Carlos made it. And now, Afonso Verdinho is back in Lisbon.”

Simon nods, grins fleetingly as if he hasn’t heard me and is being polite. We sit opposite each other. Cinfa mumbles to herself about chores to do so that I’ll think she has not been listening to our
conversation
. My irritated look forces her to skip off into the courtyard.

A taut smile opens on Simon’s face, seems painted by a talentless illuminator. I ask, “Is something amusing?”

“No.”

I point to his forehead. “You’re injured. Were you hit by someone?”

Simon reaches up to the scab, tells me how he tripped over a
tumbrel
while hiding in a feather-trimmer’s workshop, laughs while
showing
more lesions on his knee. Then he tells a silly anecdote about a dog peeing on a false leg he once tried, grins and blinks, grins some more. His eyes dart nervously around the room when silence finally overtakes speech.

In his grief he has decided to become court jester to a tyrant God.

“We’re out of wine,” I tell him. “But would you like some brandy? We have some incense from Goa left that might…”

“No, no. I’m fine.”

Farid shuffles in, lowers himself next to me. He responds to Simon’s smile with an awkward, probing tilt to his head. When it goes
unanswered
, my friend signals to me, “He’s like a starving jasmine blooming madly before it dies.”

More to dispel his false cheer than anything else, I tell Simon of my mother and Aunt Esther and the disappearances of Judah and Samir. He nods as if he’s heard my stories before. To test his reactions, I say, “I found a rosary bead near Uncle’s body. It is my belief that Father Carlos murdered my uncle.”

“Carlos, but what possible reason could he have for killing Master Abraham?” he asks.

“They argued over a manuscript that the priest wouldn’t give to Uncle,” I reply.

Simon smiles as if he’s humoring me, steps his fingers like a spider across the table.

“Well, what do you say?” I ask angrily.

“What do you want me to say? I think it’s absurd. But if it’s what you want to believe, then who am I to dispel your illusions? I’m through
trying
to find the truth. Illusions are fine. We should all be blessed with a garden of flowering lies—it’s much easier to live that way.”

Cinfa steps back inside. She huddles under Farid’s arm.

“You shouldn’t listen to me,” Simon suddenly sighs. “I’m an old fool who no longer has any courage. But for Master Abraham’s sake I will try to face the truth, if you like. Now tell me, you believe he was murdered by someone who knew him…a New Christian?” His questioning eyes seem almost hopeful, as if death by a Jew’s hand is preferable to Uncle having been murdered by a follower of the Nazarene.

“It’s very likely,” I answer. As I explain about the
shohet’s
blade and our stolen minerals, Simon bites his lip. He glances suggestively at Cinfa until his meaning becomes obvious. I ask the girl to fetch some salvaged fruit from the store for our guest.

“I understand,” she seethes. “But he was my uncle too!” She glares at me. “I’ll get fruit to help Farid get well. But not because you asked me!”

When I reach out to her, she twists away and runs out.

“I don’t know what to do with her,” I confess. “One minute she’s frightened for me, the next…”

“Time will take care of it,” Simon smiles.

“You sound like Dom Afonso Verdinho.”

“Yes, when did he return?”

“Just rode in,” I say. “Curious isn’t it?”

“What do you mean? You think that he, too, might have been…”

“It’s possible.”

“Tell me more about Master Abraham’s departure from the Lower Realms.”

In tones that race one step ahead of emotion, I describe to Simon how I found Uncle and the girl, the positions of their bodies, slits on their necks. In response, he grins, but his lips quiver. A battle is being waged for his emotions. Interrupting me suddenly, he says in a pressing tone, “And was there nothing else out of the ordinary on your uncle’s body?”

My heart beats a code spelling out the words,
um
fio
de
seda,
a silken thread, but I simply say, “Such as…?”

Simon shrugs as if to disclaim his coming words.
“Semente
branca,”
he whispers, using the kabbalist’s term, “white seed,” for semen.

“How did…?” My question is blocked by his upraised hand.

“In Seville, a member of the Jewish community informed on me. I never found out who it was. The Inquisitors don’t tell the prisoners, of course. I recanted, but they locked me away anyway. Those black marks on your uncle’s neck—they were bruises. I’ve seen them before. From hanging or garroting or…” He looks down as his smile fails. He wipes at his eyes with his shirt sleeve. “The semen emerges as a bodily reaction to pressure on the neck and windpipe,” he continues. “Not in everyone. But it happens. I have a theory that as God approaches to rescue the righteous victim, joy mounts. There is an orgasm. Perhaps even God has an orgasm at that very moment. Your uncle might have known. In any case, the victim faces the Creator as ecstasy ascends to meet pain. As a Master of the Names of God, your uncle would, of course, have reached a very powerful orgasm almost immediately.”