Yiddish for Pirates (10 page)

“How did it …?” Abraham began. “Stupid bird.” He was worried that somehow I might compromise the negotiations. If they went awry, instead of being served a hearty helping of gold he could end up as Jewish barbecue himself.

“Hello,” I said. “Howaya? Hello.”

They hurried through their discussion, not wanting me to draw attention to them.

Their plan: Abraham would meet up with the other hidden Jews and produce the books. Then the priests of the Holy Office would burst in and the red-capes would catch them right-to-left-handed with the forbidden books. They were supposed to have been New Christians, converted Jews. To set eyes on anything but the Gospels was heresy and would certainly mean death by fire.

Unless they repented. In which case, as I’d just seen, they’d be killed twice. First by strangulation. Then fire.

Choke and smoke.

The Catedral wasn’t going to be the meeting place. They wanted to preserve it as a trap for the future. For now, the books would be both lure and hook. Abraham would arrange a meeting in a “safe” place.

The two men parted. The priest in the blood-red Inquisition robes strode confidently across the square. Abraham slithered furtively, checking over his shoulder.

“Hello,” I chirped from his other shoulder. “Howaya? Hello.”

As soon as the priest was out of view, Abraham slapped at me. “Leave, vermin,” he said, and I obliged, flying up above the gables, following him like the conscience he didn’t have.

The priest navigated his jagged way forward through the illogical, dark and narrow alleys.

He must have been navigating by faith.

Like that priest who walked into a bar.

There’s a few Inquisition guys playing cards and they invite him to join them.

He asks, “What’s the ante?”

“Ten silver pieces,” they say.

Priest says, “I’m gonna get burned at those stakes.”

So, nu, I lost Abraham as he walked under some awnings and, before I could find him again, he slipped into—I think—a building attached to the Catedral. Me and God. We can’t think of everything.

By now it was dark; it was doubtful I’d find Moishe. I’d flown to where I’d gone head-to-knuckle with Diego and then to the quemadoro, where there was nothing left but ashes and shadows instead of people. The grandstand stood mute and fraught with expectation, a psychopath waiting for another touch of those silk-covered tucheses.

If I didn’t find Moishe and the hidden Jews, by next week they’d be the entertainment, the puffs of sweet human smoke that the Sevillano audience would breathe as they cheered.

Chapter Nine

Next morning as I flew over the city, searching for Inquisitors or wine merchants, hidden Jews or Moishe, I spotted the rabbi and Samuel walking down a narrow alleyway. At the corner they ducked under a low archway and through a battered green door. No one else arrived. Ten minutes later the door opened: three unkempt men and a shlumperdikeh woman singing and staggering with what appeared to be a generous filling of good spirits. A tavern, I deduced, marked only by these doddering processions.

I waited. After half an hour, Samuel and the rabbi emerged from the green door. They sang too loudly, slurring their words. It paid to be seen not Judaizing, but instead, having a good Christian mug of unkosher wine. They walked through a complex plait of alleys, eventually entering a building beneath a sign carved with images of wine barrels. I slipped through the back door and flew along a narrow hallway piled high with casks. Voices spoke indistinctly. In the dim light, I followed stairs down to the cellar. I walked along the top of casks that filled most of the room, keeping close to the wall, remaining invisible. I would first understand what was going on.

And whom I could trust.

The centre of the cellar: the rabbi, Samuel, and others around a table. Jugs of wine, decks of cards. A mixture of kibitzing, davening, and, if you can use this word for Jews, pontificating. Where was Moishe? Ach. It was better he wasn’t here. They didn’t know it, but they were like
animals gathered at a watering hole, not knowing that the red silk lions were ready to pounce.

At one end of the table, a young woman. The pretty girl, the sheyneh maideleh, from the auto-da-fé, listening gravely to the men. I tried to get a better view, and knocked over a few corks. They fell to the floor, a muted explosion. The men, absorbed in talk, didn’t notice but the girl looked up.

Me, I’m dangerous. And except for my tail, the colour of twilight and unknowing. A creature of darkness and mystery.

So I’m grey, and hard to see in dim light.

She squinted behind the barrels where I was attempting my shadowplay.

“I’ve seen you before,” she whispered.

“Hello,” I tried. “Howaya? Hello.” Best not to brandish the bright blade of my considerable eloquence.

“You were with the boy. Moishe,” she said almost inaudibly. “At the burning.”

“Hello,” I said again, idiotically. “Howaya?” Any moment now she’ll offer me a piece of matzoh.

“I know you understand,” she said. “I am named Sarah. He gave me a letter. I was to watch for you.” She glanced over at the men speaking at the table in the centre of the room, then took a scrap of parchment from the pocket of her apron.

“He’s safe. They’ve hidden him with Doña Gracia de la Peña. My father used to say there’s safety in numbers if the numbers mean large sums of money. The Doña has plenty of those kind of numbers.”

Was this a trick? Moishe knew I couldn’t read.

“My uncle—Abraham—works for her. As I do. Last night, though I wept, I did the washing. I saw Moishe brought to the Doña. She agreed to hide him. I came here to say prayers for my father. My uncle doesn’t know. It’s no place for girls and women but the rabbi took pity.”

She unfolded the note. “Your Moishe asked me to read this for you. The letters are Spanish, but the words are in the Jewish of your village.”

She read haltingly and without understanding, only parroting the sounds the letters spoke:

Arie: I’m safe, keneynehoreh. For now
.

The books are gone. No sign of the mamzer Diego. But still I must hide
.

Don’t know what he’ll do. They pay well for exposing Marranos
.

The girl is as beautiful as the seven worlds. Already I dream of her arms and other places. She’ll show you Doña Gracia’s, where I am hidden. The Doña is a powerful and wealthy Jew. A trader. She will take us to safety
.

Don’t speak. They tell me not to trust anyone. Even them. M
.

It was a bittersweet trick, having her read how pretty she was when only an Ashkenazi—or his parrot—would understand.

But every language is bittersweet to those who don’t know it.

There was a new voice, speaking at full volume from the foot of the stairs. The men around the table stood.

“I have something. You’ll be happy.” It was Abraham. He was cradling Moishe’s sack of books.

Sarah ducked behind the barrels to hide.

Her uncle walked into the centre of the room, opened the sack and spread out the books on the table.

The men held their breath. As if they were looking at a pile of rubies, their first-born sons or the shadow of the Messiah himself. The people of the book needed their books.

Rabbi Daniel began to pray.
“Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu …”

“Omein,” the others sang as he finished. They all sat and the rabbi positioned a book before him, stroking its cover as if the idea that it could exist in the same physical world as him caused both tender sadness and great joy.

He opened it and began to read out loud.

His passionate, hypnotic voice. The murmuring of assent by the men. The flicker of the candlelight.

Then the sudden thud of boots on the steps as if we were inside a Golem’s vacant heart.

The men scrambled to gather and hide the books. They picked up cards and tried to look natural, a few friends, some wine, the Ace of Cups hidden up one of their sleeves.

Two Inquisition priests and half a dozen soldiers stood in the sand at the bottom of the stairs.

“
Dominus vobiscum
, the Lord be with you,” the rabbi said and crossed himself, hoping to mimic the Christian piety of discovered gamblers.

The priest did not reply, “
Et cum spiritu tuo
, and with thy spirit,” as would be customary, but rather, “
Ecce Homo
, Behold the Man.” The words of Pontius Pilate presenting the thorn-crowned Jesus to the crowd. In this case it meant: “I’m going to crucify your Jewish tuches.”

Abraham stood up and motioned to the books concealed beneath the table. Two soldiers held the rabbi, another two held Samuel. Then a lanky soldier with a greasy moustache pushed past a small man still clutching a hand of cards, and crawled under the table. He emerged embracing a stack of books. The second priest lifted one off the pile and opened it.

“Hebrew,” he spat.

“Heresy!” the priest hissed, playing his part with high drama, as if this hadn’t all been arranged. “Converso Judaizers! You shall burn.”

From behind the barrels, an involuntary gasp from Sarah. Her uncle’s duplicity had condemned these men to die. Immediately, two soldiers rushed to look between the rows. They grabbed her arms and roughly dragged her into the centre of the room. Weeping, she shuddered between them, unable to stand. I squeezed out of sight between a barrel and the stone wall.

Abraham seemed entirely taken aback. “Sarah?”

“You know this girl?” a priest said.

“My niece.”

“The girl will come with us,” the priest said. “But, because you have been helpful to us, we will give you a choice.”

“Yes,” the second priest said. “We will take her. Unless you want to go in her place?”

Abraham looking steadily at Sarah.

Sarah sobbing.

“Take her,” he said.

The others looked at Abraham but said nothing. The soldiers then hauled them up the stairs and to a jail cell that would give them a taste of where they would spend the rest of their eternally damned lives. As if what they had just experienced wasn’t enough of an amuse-bouche.

The sound of great tumult after they left. The few short candles burned down. Leaving dark cellars was becoming my speciality.

If I didn’t know better, I would have thought that upstairs looked like the result of a Bacchanalia. It was a cooper’s nightmare of smashed and splintered casks, hogsheads, firkins, puncheons, pipes, butts and breakers intermingled with wine spilled everywhere like blood. A man lay dead near the back door, real blood running from the corner of his mouth and spreading from a dark wound in his side. I flew through the open door and over the city. Moishe was a hidden Jew, hidden even from me. But Doña Gracia, whoever she was, I would find.

And before Abraham and his red-caped fathers.

In Seville one was allowed to be a Jew the way one was allowed to be a leper: somewhere else. The Inquisition was for New Christians, heretics, Moriscos, and all those once baptized who, like addicts, had returned to illicit Judaizing. And the Inquisition was for money. For nu, what’s the intoxicating draft of organized hatred without a chaser of profit?

But where to find former Jews?

I flew toward what had once been the Jewish market. It wasn’t hard to find. I looked for a tall building that had a cross on it, but where you
could see, like a healed-over wound, the scar of what had once been a Magen David. The Jewish star.

The old synagogue.

And in front of it: the market.

Flying between stalls, I beheld untold riches of nuts and fruit. Overripe pears and oranges fallen onto the cobbles and singing a hungry parrot’s song. Delicious almonds held in the open hands of children so I could nosh and delight and amaze. For this, I was happy to play my part. But I was watchful of the slices of melons and other morsels their parents offered me, for just as a cap and a ball on a stick can be sold for amusement, so too can a captured parrot. Even more than losing Moishe, I had little fancy for the clipped wings, the jess and leg-band of the kept parrot.

It wasn’t long before I heard the name of Doña Gracia amidst the confusion of vendors’ songs, gossip, and the convoluted stories with their ay-yi-yi’s and laughter. She was the richest converso in the city, and so in the market many repeated her name. I flew about until I found someone in her employ: a man carrying an armful of bread to her kitchen. And so I followed him.

Chapter Ten

Doña Gracia’s house was a grand affair, an appropriate dwelling for such an important balebosteh, with decorated terracotta archways onto the street, and leadlight windows high above the street. The man pushed open a bright blue door with his shoulder and then backed in with his armload of bread. He couldn’t touch the mezzuzah on the door, but he did say a quiet blessing.

“Hello, pretty bird,” a woman said as I flew in behind him. “You’ve brought a friend,” she said taking some of the loaves from the man’s arms.