Yiddish for Pirates Read online

  “They say that I shall be nothing but viceroy of a continent of water, an admiral of seaweed and fishes only, but I have studied the maps. I have made the calculations.” Columbus spoke as if he could guarantee a thing by speaking boldly.

  He explained his plan to sail west across the Ocean Sea to Cathay, Cipangu, and the lands of the Great Khan.

  “I have studied the ancients. Their books mark out the miles—the Ocean Sea is not so large as we imagine. If we approach from the west, we do not need to crawl like Polo over the hackles of the world.”

  Columbus spoke of Marco Polo’s account of his travels. A book, written while Polo was imprisoned, had been later chained to the Rialto Bridge in Venice so all could read its marvels.

  “I will spend some years attaining complete mastery of the ways of the tides and winds. I will sail to Thule, to Galway, and south to the new territories of Africa. And then I shall seek a king who will provide me ships and the mariners to sail them, and who shall grant me governance of the new lands that I shall discover on my great voyage.”

  Of course he would stand astride the world. With such beytsim, he could bring his legs together?

  “What of the dragons and the monstrous whirlpools which hunger for your ship?” Moishe said.

  “Some also believe the woods filled with witches, ghosts and demons, but these are only shadows or squirrels made infernal by fear.” Columbus emptied his mug of wine with a flourish and sleeved his mouth. “A traveller with a good stick can easily manage these travails.”

  He stood up, the better to continue his enthusiastic oration to the crowd of boy and parrot.

  “Not long ago, they thought a book could only be made through the crablike crawling of the human hand, but Gutenberg showed us a new route was possible. Soon they will take their moveable type and print books with my name in them. Histories and new maps of the world with ‘Columbus’ written over the western seas.”

  Then this lord of the new ocean listed toward the barn where he would collapse beside pigs and chickens.

  “Do you think that what he says could be true—that the world is a snake with its tail in its own mouth?” Moishe asked. “Could he sail to the Indies?”

  “I’m sure by now that that balmelocheh has the chickens ready to wager their eggs on it. But ver veyst? Who knows? Here am I, an African Grey, speaking to a boy, five thousand miles from where I was born. Could my mother have dreamt this when I was hatched from the egg?”

  Later, as he staggered toward sleep, Moishe took his father’s book from its hiding place beneath a bundle of rags. Columbus’s words reminded him of its circular maps. But, unwrapping the cloth that protected it, he discovered that the book, waterlogged when he was wrecked off the coast, had dried into a paper brick and would not open.

  Perhaps all it needed was another good dunking. The hair of the dog that fressed upon it.

  Early morning. The sun squinting bloodshot over the droop-eyed horizon.

  An early exodus along the coast road. We were to work for the farmer in exchange for food and lodging, but planned to be far away by the time he came looking for us. You’re no one’s worm if you’re earlier than the early bird.

  The two of them held their heads and shielded their eyes against the daylight and the effects of wine. I sat on Moishe’s shoulder and closed my eyes.

  A worn path through the rolling hills, the beaches and the steady breaking of the waves far below. We walked between dusty boulders and stunted trees, the only sounds the shuffle of their feet and the occasional bird. Then low murmuring, but, half asleep, I imagined it nothing but the rumble of Moishe’s belly.

  We continued over a small rise and along a curving cliffside road.

  “I was thinking …” Moishe began.

  But then the unmistakeable scrape of a blade drawn from its scabbard. Three men jack-in-the-boxed from behind the rocks. A thin youth soon had a dagger across Columbus’s chicken neck. The older and thicker two stood in front of us. All were wrapped in rags.

  “Money,” the one to the left said darkly. An orator, his demands were expressed with near-classical economy.

  Moishe had nothing but the book tucked into his shoulderbag and one remaining silver piece sewn into his waistband, the other having being lost in the escape from the burning ship.

  I had nothing but my keen wits, my good looks, and my treasure trove of many words.

  Columbus, of course, had untold riches.

  Just not yet.

  I have not found ruffians to be at ease with the concept of IOUs.

  It was not long before Columbus was on the ground, the knife ready to carve him into brisket.

  One of the shtarkers held Moishe while the orator punched him in the kishkas, hoping, one assumes, to have him puke money.

  I took this moment to attempt an old trick. A parrot, desirous of pecking-order dominance, doesn’t futz around with pecking. He stretches his wings wide and swoops clawfirst and topples the rival parrot.

  The orator’s head, perched on his shoulders, would be the rival parrot.

  I flew up and began my swoop.

  If his head didn’t fall off, at least I’d make a nice borscht of his face.

  “Avast!” the skinny thief warned and the thick thug let go of Moishe. Moishe slid the book from beneath his shirt and gave the pugilating orator a mighty klop on the head. It did not fall off, for it was attached like a dingleberry to the thick tuft of his neck, but the orator collapsed.

  Then Moishe heaved the book over the cliff. “Money,” he yelled. The two standing gonifs, taking the bait, ran after the book as it fell toward the sea. I rerouted my attack and hit the skinny thief in the face. Moishe rushed forward and grabbed the knife. Columbus lay still on the ground like an uninhabited island awaiting discovery.

  Moishe had boyhood experience playing catch-and-wrestle. And this time he had a knife. The kosher way to slaughter an animal is to slit its throat and let the blood run out. Moishe was the shochet and he had the skinny one ready to be turned to deli meat.

  “Money,” Moishe said again, this time into the ear of the skinny youth, and I noted that his pronunciation was rapidly improving. Fear had already drained the blood from the youth’s face. He reached into his pocket and produced a small sack. We heard the muffled chinking of money.

  “Money,” Moishe repeated with an ironic smile, tucking away the sack with his free hand. “If you want a job done right, you have to do it yourself,” he said, demonstrating casual mastery of the idiom.

  By this time Columbus was on his feet. Moishe’s blade was still at the youth’s throat. Columbus put his face, with its sea blue eyes, close to the youth’s. “Go,” he said.

  The single syllable was sufficient. Moishe removed the knife and the youth fled back along the road like a bullet trying to return to its gun.

  Columbus said one more syllable, this time to Moishe.

  “Thanks.”

  Columbus owned little. Evidently, he had to be frugal, saving even his gratitude as we had saved his life.

  Chapter Three

  Moishe was learning of the world outside the shtetl: it was the fifteenth century. Bandits were expected roadside attractions. There were no signs that said, “Last mugging for twenty miles,” but du farshteyst, you get the idea. You couldn’t trust the eyes in the back of your head not to wink coquettishly at misfortune, once in awhile.

  We resumed walking.

  Moishe now had a chance to look back and be scared in retrospect at the rush of events. And though it had been unreadable, the worlds in its maps unreachable, Moishe mourned the loss of his father’s book. It had been a tangible memory, a written familiar from his past.

  Ach, but he still had me. I might sometimes be a tosser, but I was untossable. I was a flying language guide for travellers, and as we plodded on, I continued to teach. I imagined myself like the chirping feygeleh that landed on Pope Gregory’s shoulder and whispered Gregorian chants in his infallible, pontifical ear.

 
Who knew what words they would use to offer this Polly a cracker, or a bite of a pretty zaftik morsel? But, nu, it’d certainly be in a language meant for Miguel and not Moishe.

  Miguel would need to be ready.

  Columbus spoke little. The rudderless coracle of his thoughts bobbed elsewhere. Except when Moishe inquired of his brother’s charthouse.

  “My good brother Bartholemeo is a writer and merchant of charts and texts. There are many learned men from Granada to Galicia, from Portugal to the Pyrenees who learn who and where they are by purchasing his finely drawn maps and his well-bound books.”

  When the subject was himself or his brother, Columbus did not use one word when two were possible.

  Like some parrots, he was—ech—his own echo.

  Moishe listened with visible wonder as Columbus roiled on about the beauty and scholarship of his brother’s wares. He spoke of currents, shorelines, Ptolemy and Africa. Of carmine-coloured writing and even of blue. Of inks created of vitriol and black amber, of sugar, the lees of wine, fish-glue, and isinglass, this last being especially appropriate for nautical charts, made as it was from the dried swim bladders of fish.

  “My father’s book,” Moishe began enthusiastically, “filled with strange, unreadable writing in beautiful script. Diagrams and drawings of unknown places. The world made larger because drawn on a page.”

  “What was this book?”

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t read it though its letters were Hebrew … I mean of course I couldn’t read it …” Moishe stammered, realizing he had said too much.

  “A book of the Jews?” Columbus asked.

  Moishe had inadvertently revealed his true background. He quickly began to cover it in false dress.

  “My father could not have known what it was. He had meagre learning and read little. He had faith in the teachings of the Church. He was no heretic … he prayed frequently and crossed himself often …”

  “I myself am much interested in the ancient holy books,” Columbus said. “The First Testament of the Jews. The Books of Ezra, Joshua …” Then he muttered, as if looking toward the distant Holy Land itself, “God willing, Jerusalem will soon be wrested from the infidels and returned …”

  He became lost along the vague trails of imagination and desire.

  He hadn’t noticed anything Jewish out of the Christian ordinary. Nu, he saw no light but his own shadow.

  “But of course,” he said, suddenly returning, “I also read navigation, history and cosmology. Ancient writings from Ptolemy to Pliny, the travels of Sir John Mandeville and Marco Polo. And the works of Church Fathers from Cardinal d’Ailly’s Imago Mundi to Pope Pius II’S Historia Rerum Ubique Gestarum.

  “And yet there are many books that I still wish to read. Once, I heard my brother speak of a book of the Jews, written in ancient Aramaic; perhaps your father’s was, also. It tells of a fountain that flows from a crack in the edge of the world, a fissure between earth and sky. Its elemental waters bring life eternal. I would travel and drink there, carry away its waters more valued than gold.”

  A Fountain of Youth, Columbus? That emes was a wet dream. Time is the only river and it makes you grow old. Or at least, that’s what I thought then. Ach, what did it matter, we now needed water from a more quotidian puddle, for the sun demonstrated an interest in hard-boiling our pates, and so, when we observed a small cluster of buildings at a crossroads a mile away, we quickened our step. We expected to discover an inn, both sustenance and shade. With some gelt from Moishe’s newly acquired money sack, there would soon be plates of meat and cups of wine before us. Me, I was chaleshing for fruit, seeds, and an ocean of fresh water.

  Several grey mules, a few bent horses, and one impressive black stallion were tied up outside and tended to by a scrawny boy. The inn was called Dom Venéreo, and it stooped like an old nag, leaning oysgeshpiltedly toward the glue pot. A door sagged open to a dark place of pockmarked tables and wine. An assortment of men with their heads in their hands, faces sombre and brooding. And a tall, handsome man with a red feather in his impressive hat. He was undoubtedly the stallion owner.

  We set our course for a table below a shelf cluttered with seashells and wooden mugs. Before our tucheses made landfall, Columbus had already called for food and drink from the barmaid who, it seemed, had been sewn together some time ago from old leather and duck meat. He left us at the table while he went to speak with the man and his ostentatious hat.

  A red feather. Someone I knew?

  The barmaid arrived with a wooden plate of amorphous stew, a jug filled with wine, and some bread. Moishe tore some breadcrust for me and held a mug of wine to my beak. Columbus was fathoms deep in words with the man when he motioned to Moishe to bring some money. Moishe fished out two small silver pieces and went to the table.

  Moishe had saved Columbus’s life. He had mined the thief’s money sack from its youthful source. Yet, somehow, Columbus assumed the role of captain. As if it were as natural as his haughty self-absorption and blinkless faith in himself. As if he had not been born wet and slippery, but was from some other place. A place where the worth and fame of his future deeds were assured.

  Moishe put the money on the table and Columbus pushed the coins toward the man. A game of checkerless checkers. The man promptly lifted the silver and stowed it in a pocket of his embroidered waistcoat with a small twitch of a smile.

  We were to ride two mules to Lisbon.

  Chapter Four

  The scrawny boy stood smartly at attention as Red Feather strode from the inn door, his boots billowing small clouds of dust with each imperious step. A few curt orders and the boy began untying the mules.

  Columbus, with the air of a grand knight setting out on a grail quest, took the reins and mounted the mule as if it were a great stallion.

  Moishe climbed aboard his mule as if clambering out a window. He had no experience with great horses, but his father’s swayback carthorse was like an old and simple uncle to him and Moishe had taken joyrides about the yard on its rickety back.

  We set out along the road to Lisbon. Moishe, the mule and I—mule surmounted by youth surmounted by parrot—resembling the fabled Musicians of Bremen, that motley vertical parade-across-species.

  By late afternoon, we saw the broad blue expanse of the Tagus River as it widened into a virtual inland sea before flowing into the ocean. I remembered a fado marinheiro sung by a sailor intoxicated with nostalgia and loss, a feeling the Portuguese call saudade. “My hair is getting white, but the Tagus is always young,” he sang. And, ach, the sadness and wonder at witnessing a great river opening out into the sea. The current flowing purposefully forward, the always-young river suddenly lost in the endless, bankless vastness of the directionless sea, the stories of the lands that border the river diluted like so much salt.

  Soon the lanky towers of the royal palace, the Alcáçova Castle, rose above the city.

  Gotenyu, Moishe was gobsmacked. He’d never seen a city of such vastness.

  Me, I’d travelled the sea from fort to raft and had seen much. Still, there is that excitement that builds at the approach of a city. The great hive buzzes with its citizens, the energizing mix of honey, work, romance, shtupping, horse dung and thieves.

  The Tagus was filled with grand ships leaving, returning, bringing news of new regions of Africa, bringing gold, spices, textiles and slaves.

  You know what they say about being a slave: it’s a terrible job, but at least you have job security.

  We entered the city proper, guiding our mules through streets filled with a chaos of traffic. Then Columbus stopped. He began explaining to Moishe how to find his brother’s shop.

  “You will travel elsewhere?” Moishe asked.

  Columbus had a speech ready, in case history were listening.

  “Convey my affectionate greetings and regrets to my brother. Though born a weaver’s son, I would be a man of the greater world and, by Jesu, have been granted this chance. Today, I trade weft for wharf and warp for
wave. The gentleman met in the Dom Venéreo Inn has a brother who requires mariners for Iceland and Africa. He who wishes to find his way through the labyrinth of the western seas must first learn the winds of the whale roads and the warm waters of Africa. We sail this same day and so you must present yourself before Bartolomeo with this message: you will help him with his maps in my stead. Perhaps together you will chart the new lands I will find.”

  And with that, Columbus turned down an alley and was gone.

  We were marooned in the great ocean of the city with nothing but a mule and the empty net of Columbus’s words.

  A shaynem dank dir in pupik, as they say. Many thanks to your belly button. Thanks for nothing.

  Perhaps not exactly nothing. Mapless, Moishe had travelled in search of maps and those who read them. From the narrow river of his birth, he would soon enter a larger sea. And, takeh, it’s true: what was unmapped for Moishe was maps.

  Maps did not lead one to navigate with the eyes only. Reading maps led to following them. Before long, you wanted to be aboard that tiny caravel inscribed on the goatskin sea, blown by the favourable winds of commerce and curiosity, looking with a miniscule telescope at the islands of ink and the monsters that swam about the vague shores beyond.

  And the roots of mountains, friable with gold.

  Whatever the path, maps led to mariners.

  Columbus’s brother, Bartolemeo Colon, lived and worked in a small building bordering on the Jewish quarter of Lisbon. A dun-coloured globe hung from a gibbet sticking out above the door.

  A knock and then we were inside the dim room cluttered with books and charts both rolled and laid flat, piled on shelves, tables and the floor. A white-bearded, bent-backed ancient was stooped as if davening—praying—before a large map, dipping the dried-out hook of his nose into the ocean of parchment.

  “Bartolemeo Colon?” Moishe asked, though surely this rebbe was more like the brother of Columbus’s ancestors.

  The alter mensch wheezed a sound between leaves and a handful of phlegm and a young man appeared from behind a tottering shelf. His clear blue eyes revealed him to be the true brother of Columbus and he took us to the small courtyard behind the building.