The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon (41 page)

Leci, my wife, is gifted with that ironic way of thinking as well. Didn’t start out that way, though. She’s the daughter of a shoemaker who became our first friend here in Constantinople. When I met her, she had long, henna-tinted black-red hair, green eyes of restricted
longing
that always seemed afraid to ask a secret question. Lips sealed to silence. Maybe it was the death of her mother when she was just five.
Frightened she was when I met her, spiritually shivering. And yet, she had the sexual sleekness of a wet cat. When she moved, she seemed to drag the ground and air with her.

I came to her one evening when her father was out of town. Appeared in silhouette in her doorway. She’d been reading. After
sharing
a look connoting secret adventure, she lay her book on her chest and blew out her candle. Without words, I lifted away my shirt and stepped out of my pants.

When our desires rose beyond the explorations of our mouths and hands, she climbed on top. Bracing herself as if before an altar, she sheathed herself down upon me.

Can the perfect fit of a couple’s sexual organs be symbolic of a
spiritual
correspondence?

As she gyrated her wet warmth over me, I pictured my old friend Rana Tijolo suckling her baby, Miguel. I buried my head deep in the warmth of Leci’s breasts and thought:
Here
is
the
woman
I
will
give
myself
to.

And so it has been. More than my manuscripts, more than my
studies
of kabbalah, I consider my life’s accomplishment what I have given her and my children. It hasn’t always been good, or even enough, but I have offered what I’ve had without any mask.

Which leads me to the reason I have taken up my reed pen once again and told you our story.

As I said at the beginning of our tale, I had a visitor just yesterday, around midday: Lourenço Paiva, the son of our old laundress and friend, Brites. Before his mother’s death, she had asked him to come and offer me back ownership of our old house at the corner of the Rua de São Pedro and Rua da Sinagoga, to see if I wanted to return home.

With our old house keys biting into my closed fist, I turned away into a vision of Portugal: Cork trees and poppies. Roseta and her collar of cherries. Mordecai and my father. Lisbon’s houses of white and blue. Rossio Square. The mirror of river beyond our old synagogue. The sweet scent of the oleander bushes in our courtyard. Judah and Uncle. The graves on the Almond Farm.

Then, a vision opened inside me, one in which my master tossed me Portuguese letters knotted into a chain which read:
as nossas
andorinhas
ainda estão nas mãos do faraó
—our swallows are still abandoned to
Pharaoh. As my gaze passed over these words of New Christian code a second time, they lifted into the air, then broke with a tinkling sound.

When I came to, my chest was pounding a verse that said:
I
have
a
chance
to
go
home.

And that’s when isolated events in my Torah memory suddenly linked together into a reading of the past which I believe my uncle had counted on me to make so many years ago.

I reached for my wine carafe and grabbed the vellum ribbon on which Aunt Esther had written my name and Uncle’s—the ribbon which he gave me just before his death, when he promised to come to my aid no matter what the circumstances. Alone in my prayer room, I remembered the terrible verses from Genesis about the sacrifice of Isaac which my master made me recite to Judah that fateful Passover… He had explained to us that in order to achieve the highest of goals, the self had to be extinguished. He had meant
his
self.

Before his death, in our cellar, Uncle had posed questions to me about my willingness to leave Portugal. He spoke of his grave fears that my mother and Reza would never be willing to depart. These fears betray his motivation; he was implying that only the most terrible tragedy could sever my mother and Reza—his only living child—from Portugal.

Even the words of my uncle’s which were quoted by Diego in the bogus suicide note he wrote for Solomon the
mohel
make reference to an occult reason for his death: “Your iron blade will anneal me to God and maybe even serve a higher purpose.”

What higher purpose could his death have served? What was my master thinking?

Over the last twenty-four hours, I have let my speculations mingle with my questions till they formed a knotted pattern which refused to release me. So I took down my ink well from its shelf and got out the manuscript which I had originally written in the Christian year of fifteen and seven and which—with a few minor alterations—has now become what I refer to as Book One. And that’s when I began to
complete
our story for you.

Mesirat
nefesh,
the
willingness to risk everything for a goal that will effect reparations in the Lower and Upper Realms. Only now do I believe that I understand how such unspoken courage lit Uncle’s
emerald
eyes, moved his hands to bless the world.

“I swear to protect you from the dangers which dance along the way,” he had pledged to me when I was but eight. Yes, he had lived up to his words. For here I was, safe, in Constantinople!

What I am trying to say, fitfully, hesitantly, because of my own
failing
strength and the effect of too much Anatolian wine, is that Uncle sacrificed himself. In part, probably, to try to save the girl, Teresa, who was murdered alongside him. But more importantly, I believe that he let himself be killed
for
the
generations
to
come.
To force my mother and Reza—our entire family—to leave Portugal. To enable our family tree to take root securely in another land. A land with soil willing to accept Jews without masks.

Not that I’m theorizing that my uncle willed Diego down into his cellar or brought him there through practical kabbalah. No. But
perhaps
Uncle suspected that he’d receive a visit. Whatever the case, there came a moment—maybe only when Diego descended the cellar stairs—when my master began to understand the
true
meaning of the riot against us, when he saw the possibilities which would spring from his death at the hands of a murderer. For better or for worse, he
concluded
that our family, our people, had reached a terrible impasse, and that only his violent death would compel us to break through.

Is this theory insanity? Maybe so. Maybe only God knew that my uncle was going to be sacrificed that Passover.

And yet there is more evidence to support my theory, a bit of proof which may convince you that what I say is at least possible.

Years ago, Farid claimed that the drawing of Mordecai in Uncle’s last Haggadah was modeled on my face, that I was cast as the savior of the Jews from the Book of Esther. I didn’t think it possible; Mordecai appeared far too old in the drawing.

I reasoned, too, that even if Uncle
had
modeled this hero’s face upon my own, it was because he had had a mystical inkling that I would later take revenge on his Haman—Diego.

In examining this illuminated panel yesterday, however, I
discovered
something astounding. Mordecai looks very much as I do now, twenty-four years after Uncle drew him. We share the same closely cropped graying hair, the same weary eyes—both of us survivors, but witnesses to tragedy as well.

You see, Uncle had so discerning an eye that he was able to paint what I would look like nearly a quarter of a century into the future.

So only now do I begin to accept that my master had gifted me with a greater purpose, had divined that I, like this ancient Jewish hero, would one day fight to save our people.

And I am convinced that this is the reason why—in the vision I had yesterday—my uncle called me “Mordecai.” He wasn’t using my older brother’s name, as I originally thought, but that of the Biblical saviour of our people.

Yet how had he intended for me to rescue them—I, Berekiah Zarco, a man who no longer even believes in a personal God?

Your hands are touching the answer; I suspect that Uncle sensed that only the nightmare of his death would compel me to write this very book which you are now reading. That only his violent departure from the Lower Realms would make me see that our future in Europe was finished. That only the most terrible tragedy could convince me to beg all the Jews—every last one of us, whether New Christian or not—to move to where we will be safe from the Inquisition and whatever other horrors the Christian kings will one day dream up for us.

For if there is one thing we can say about the European monarchs it is that they have no shortage of dreams about the Jews. We haunt them in their spiritual darkness.

If you don’t admit that there is even a small chance that these
speculations
are a valid reading of his actions, then I wish you well in your loneliness; it is clear you have never known anyone with my uncle’s
spiritual
strength, with causeless, unconditional love for you, who would sacrifice himself for your survival.

Or perhaps it would be more appropriate for me to pity my own talents as a writer; my tale has not succeeded in convincing you that Master Abraham Zarco was real. I apologize. But now I tell you, and you must find the courage to believe: there exist men and women with such passionate resolve that they will willingly give up their lives for generations of children whom they will never even meet.

So I was wrong all those years ago when I told my old friend Rana Tijolo that Uncle still believed Jews could speak in the future tense in Portugal. He knew then that there was only the past for us in Iberia and in all the Christian lands of Europe. Can you believe it was mere whimsy that made him plan for us to move to a
Moslem
land, to Turkey?

No accidents, no coincidences. Is it possible?

So far, I have only dared to tell Farid of my theories, and in reply
he signalled, “But don’t you think Uncle could have done more for the Jewish people alive than dead?”

A good question. Events may have moved too quickly for my
master
to control them. And as I say he may have only understood his
purpose
in a flash of insight, just as Diego tossed a rosary around his neck.

I believe that he trusted that God could make better use of him dead than alive.

In any event, I have no answer except the faith which burns in my gut. But even if my theory is dreadfully wrong, I still dare not put my pen down or tear up these pages. I cannot bet the survival of the Jews on the righteousness of European Kings who have shown time and again that they bear no sense of justice. Because even if I’m wrong, even if I am reading from left to right, even if my master was so
exhausted
from his vigil for Reza that he could not lift his hands to fight Diego, can you be sure that the Christians won’t one day come for you, for all of us? That traitors like Diego won’t help them?

And so, we finally come to Diego and to what the
true
meaning of his betrayal might be. This I have asked myself many times, of course.

The key to my interpretation of his actions resides in the
kabbalistic
definition of evil—
good
which
has
departed
from
its
rightful
place.

I believe that Diego was a man who could have flourished amongst his own people. In living with Old Christians, however, in having to struggle against the terror which their Church and Inquisition inspired in him, he turned to evil.

And so I believe that there will be many others like Diego who will conspire against us unless we move from Europe. That, too, is part of the meaning of Uncle’s death.

As for my hesitation to speak of this… Not surprisingly, part of me would like to dismiss my words as rubbish. For if my faith points toward the truth, then I have failed my uncle miserably. Twenty-three years ago, I allowed my cousin, Reza, to remain behind in Portugal. May Uncle forgive me. For if he is right, if my reading of the verses of the past is correct, then her family is doomed.

That is why I must take the blessed keys dear Lourenço has given me and re-enter Portugal’s gates. This manuscript is the weapon which I will carry with me. May its words string together to form the noose that will hang Haman.

Farid says he will accompany me, that I will need his protection.
Perhaps he is right. Together, we will fetch Reza and her family and bring them back to Constantinople.

May all the New Christians and Jews accompany us.

And may my children and wife understand my reasons for leaving.

The first thin light of dawn has just pierced my window shutters, and my wrist aches. It is time for me to reach into my ink well for the last few strokes of my pen. Let the angels behind my words press
understanding
into my soul and yours.

As I said at the very beginning, this is a story of warning. You who read these words, whether Jew or New Christian, Sephardi or Ashkenazi, if the borders of Europe still enclose you, then you are in grave danger. The Inquisition will spread, and very soon our Bleeding Mirror will run with blood as it never has before. That is why Uncle appeared to me now. The killing is only just beginning. You can be assured, the European kings and their hateful bishops will never stop dreaming of us. They will never allow you and your children to live. Never! Sooner or later, in this century or five centuries hence, they will come for you or your descendents. No village, no matter how remote, will be safe. No aristocrat or foreign army will come to protect you. This is the meaning I make of Uncle’s death. So take off your mask. Face Constantinople and Jerusalem. And start walking.

Cast out Christian Europe from your heart and never look back!

Blessed are all of God’s self-portraits.

                                          Berekiah Zarco, Constantinople