Yiddish for Pirates (11 page)

“She’s been following me,” he said.

“She must want some of this lovely bread,” the woman said.

Why is it that people think some animals are male and some are female, as if we don’t come in both flavours? So was I going to explain my noble ambitions regarding procreation and the love of a good parrot maiden?

Not yet. I had found it best to wait until you really know someone.

The woman broke off some crust and offered me a nosh. Really, I’d had plenty at the market, but I received her kindness with what I considered a manly grace and delicacy.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Miguel,” I said. “Miguel.”

“Miguel! How pretty!” the woman said.

The man broke off some more bread. “Funny name for a girl parrot.”

“Why don’t you bring Miguel to the painter? Maybe he’ll put her in the new portrait of Doña Gracia?”

Likely the painter was closer to the action than these two crusty bread breakers, so I was quick to jump at the opportunity. I hopped onto the offered forearm of the man and we walked further into the house.

House. It was more like a galleon planted in the ground. A palace.

We walked down many halls, up countless steps, past innumerable rooms.

It was a small world but who would want to paint it?

We entered a hall lined with colourful tapestries depicting seas of curling waves, great ships balanced on the foaming cowlick peaks. A man in a spattered red smock, his white beard itself like ocean foam, had rolled out many painted canvasses on the floor and on the dock-sized oak table in the centre. He was speaking solicitously to an impressive lady dressed in furs and a fine brocade robe.

Doña Gracia.

Tall, dark, full, her hair plaited elaborately above her, like the dark red leaves of an autumn tree.

The painter pointed at the canvases. “My Doña, the hills of Tuscany behind this prince, the Grand Canal behind this Pope’s nephew. Each painting tells its story not only in the faces of these noble people—a small curve of the lips, the stage play of the eyes, the angle of the nose and forehead—and not only in finery of their dress and jewels, but also in the landscapes behind them, stretching out over the unreachable horizon of the canvas.”

Doña Gracia examined the paintings dispassionately.

“Doña Gracia, I would paint you before an ocean teaming with boats, the wind bulging full in the sails, the barques sunk low with the rich prizes of your trade.”

She remained impassive.

“Doña,” he said, suddenly quiet, whispering conspiratorially, “you would appear so strong and beautiful, so haughty and so rich, that the King and Queen of almost-all-the-Spains would wet their Catholic britches and despair.”

At that, Doña Gracia smiled broadly, the bright sparkle of a diamond twinkling where an incisor once was. And then she began to laugh, which made her appear all the more strong, beautiful, haughty and rich.

“Señor Fernandez,” she said, “you paint a pretty picture with your tongue, and more than a portrait of me, I would rather relish this picture of Their Almost Spains in their sodden bloomers.”

She then caught sight of me and clapped her hands together. “Señor painter, is this your ghost-grey Polly? Something flown out of a painting? Speak, Polly!” she said to me.

As I have said, I know on which side of the brain the bread is buttered.

“Doña Gracia,” I said. “My gracious greetings, Doña Gracia, hello. Hello. Howaya?”

She nodded gracefully at me and then turned to the painter and smiled wryly. “You’re a sly old brush slinger, canvas-monkey,” she said. “You’ve brought me a courtier to speak pretty as if I had my own court. To make me puff like a sheet in a gale.”

“Miguel,” I squawked. “Miguel.”

“Indeed, painter-Polly,” Doña Gracia said. “I had that thought also.”

She turned back to the kitchen servant, on whose forearm I rested.

“This will keep the boy busy until we make arrangements for him,” she said. “Take the bird to Miguel and tell him to teach it to pray. When we are all gone, at least the parrot will remember our prayers.”

The servant bowed once, then together we walked through a neighbourhood of hallways and down a hillside of steps. Eventually we arrived at a large wooden door that led from a courtyard, in the middle of which was a fountain in the form of a fish.

The man opened the door with a large and rusty key attached to his belt by a rusty chain. We walked into the room.

Moishe.

He stood up, beaming. I flew from the man’s arm onto his shoulder. My shoulder. The light shone in from a high window and so my shadow fell where it should. Across Moishe’s skinny chest.

A bookmark without a book doesn’t know where it is. Moishe was my slim volume, my scrawny story. My shoulder.

And he radiated joy and relief. If he could have hugged me, he would have.

“Whips. Sinking ships. The Inquisition. Someone doesn’t want me to have a parrot.”

He scratched my neck and it was pure delight. I became an idiot chicken.

“Pretty girlfriend you’ve got there,” the bread man said.

“Thanks,” Moishe replied. “His name is Aaron.”

We told each other our stories, Moishe explaining how they wandered the streets looking for Diego, Moishe like a dowser, trying to lead them to the alleyway, following only his intuition and the nervous beating in his chest.

“I knew I was near,” Moishe said. “But after awhile, the corners all looked the same, like the corners of a circle. And I knew if we kept wandering around, we’d be discovered. So we gave up and they brought me here.”

I told him how Abraham, like Judas, had betrayed us. How he had betrayed Samuel, the rabbi, and even his own niece. About the wine that was blood after the raid of the merchant’s cellar.

“Ptuh!” he spat. “That mamzer Abraham is the one that deserves blood and fire. And since he won’t save his own niece, I will. And the others, too.”

Since we’d been apart, it seemed Moishe had had his Bravado Mitzvah. His chutzpah was impressive. It had taken root and had been growing since he’d held that knife to the thieving youth’s neck. And like me, he was a bit of foygl too. A wise guy.

He looked around the room and up at the high window as if he were imagining escape.

“But I have no idea how.”

I told him about how the room filled with red capes and Hebrew books.

“So, nu, how will the rabbi and his Jews fly from their prison?” he asked.

“Red wings,” I said, spreading my own grey ones impressively. “Not a wolf in sheep’s clothing, but sheep in red silk. Catholic wolves. We’ll dress them as Inquisition priests.”

“You molodyets of a bird,” he said. “You clever rascal. An impressive plan.

“Especially the part where they’re still locked in a dungeon, but just better dressed.”

We agreed that there were some details that remained to be worked out.

There was a knock on the door. “Perhaps it’s the Messiah,” I said. “Our prayers are answered.”

Nu, it was the bread man telling us that Doña Gracia wanted to see us.

Chapter Eleven

He led us along a covered hallway and into a small inner courtyard. Doña Gracia was sitting by a pool with another fountain, surrounded by greenery. Broad leaves, hibiscus flowers, palm trees, and twittery birds with the brainpower of flowers.

It felt like home.

Doña Gracia received us like a queen.

Moishe bowed slightly as he stood before her, and so, whether I intended to or not, I bowed also.

“I see you and the bird have become friends,” she said.

“Yes, Doña Gracia,” he said. “We’ve had a few minutes together. He’s taught me all he knows.”

She laughed but then added gravely, “Flight should be something on your mind. Even with my gold, it will be hard to keep the Inquisitors satisfied without you. They are not planning to bother themselves with even the pretence of a trial. On Friday they intend to burn those they have already taken.”

“Like Shabbos candles,” I said without thinking.

What a pisk I have sometimes. A big mouth.

“You have taught this bird not only davening, but about Shabbos candles, too?” Doña Gracia looked at Moishe with some amazement.

“He needs to know. For his Bar Mitzvah,” Moishe joked, covering for me.

“And similes?” she said. “You taught him similes?” She was a clever bird herself. She knew.

“Once I had a husband,” she said. “He was a smart man. Even when he was alive, he never disagreed with anything I said. But I’m told that when the opportunity arose and he was called upon to make his own decisions, he had a mind of his own. I suspect that it’s this way with this parrot. That’s good. We can use him.”

What was I saying about being press-ganged?

“You can be of great help in rescuing our friends,” she said to me. And then, businesslike, she moved on, evidently believing it best not to question intelligence in this time of folly.

A prominent merchant from a family of hidden Jews, her husband had been murdered by zealots. Since then, the Doña had sworn to help Jews or conversos escape. They’d be taken on as extra crew or cargo on her trade ships that sailed for Morocco. The ships would return with a new Moroccan crew and fruit, wheat, slaves, copper, iron and African gold—gold-embroidered caps, golden saddles, shields and swords adorned with gold, and even dogs’ collars decorated with gold and silver.

Jewish freedom was all collar and no dog. And the dog that wasn’t there was free to roam the streets of Fez, Marrakech and Rabat.

It was only a matter of time, she said, before all Iberian Jews and the sincere or expedient New Christians would be as the Jews of Egypt in ancient times: slaves, servants, and builders of monuments to their masters. The Jews of Andalusia had been expelled, ballast thrown kippah-first off the kingdom’s bow, but even this treacherous fate wasn’t available to conversos. The Inquisition would poke and prod for signs of the vermin-taint of continued Judaizing, take their money and property, but not let them leave, save through Death’s door.

Doña Gracia wouldn’t wait for the waters to part to help them escape these plagues. She had a fleet.

Moishe and the condemned Jews would travel to Morocco—to Fez—where the houses were finely built and curiously painted, tiled and roofed with gold, azure, and other excellent colours, some with
crystal fountains and surrounded with roses and other odoriferous flowers and herbs. And where they could be safe.

When she had helped the last of the hidden Jews to escape, she would set sail herself for Morocco, an elf at the end of a difficult Age.

Her plan: We knew that most prisoners were held in a dungeon that had been created below a certain church. She would have someone ply the guard with drink. It was a typical escape story. Moishe would help me get through the bars. I’d get the key from the guard and carry it in my beak. The taste of freedom in a jailbird’s mouth.

I suggested we bring the red capes so that the prisoners, as the saying goes, could be disguised in plain sight. In those times of heightened security, Doña Gracia thought it would be a good idea.

I looked at Moishe with I-told-you-so eyes.

“But it will be impossible to get the capes from the Catedral,” Doña Gracia said. “Do you expect that we can just walk out with them?”

Now it was Moishe’s turn for the I-told-you-so eyes.

But then: “I know of a way,” he said. “My father told me this story. Each evening, a servant was seen walking home from the court, carrying a silver plate covered by a cloth. ‘Leftovers,’ he said. The guards at the portcullis began to get suspicious. ‘He’s stealing from the king,’ one said to the other. ‘Let’s search him.’ And so they did. They lifted the cloth from the plate, but there was nothing but a few scraps of ill-used food. Each day for a month the man walked home with a plate and each day the guards found only scraps. At the end of the month, the man did not return to work. The news quickly spread throughout the palace that thirty silver plates were missing from the royal kitchen and the shyster was nowhere to be seen.

“So, my plan: sneak into the Catedral and walk out wearing two red capes. Return wearing only one. Repeat until we have all the capes we need. It’s perfect. Who would think twice about a priest walking in a church?”

“Another priest. Maybe you could put on all the capes at once and pretend to be a fat shnorrer of a priest,” I said.

Doña Gracia laughed. “And then if you were stabbed, like Queen Isabella’s overdressed ladies-in-waiting, no knife could reach you,” she said.

“So, my idea needs work,” Moishe said.

Chapter Twelve

Midnight. The streets of Seville empty as the wind from either end of a shlemiel. The sky moonless but for a luminous blade disappearing behind cloud. We exit through a small sally port in the west wall of Doña Gracia’s and into an alleyway. Moishe is Red Riding Hood, carrying a basket of food. Not for his Bubbie but for fairy-tale Christians, the secret Jews held prisoner by red-hooded wolves.

What drink goes best with dungeon food?

The Merlot of Human Kindness?

Molotov cocktails.

We’ll get to that.

Some of the larger homes had night watchmen but more often than not, their beat was the jurisdiction of Nod. Still we crept quietly and kept close to walls.