Yiddish for Pirates Page 9

  Sha. And you thought he was just happy to see me?

  I spoke a few more meshugeneh sermons from various rafters around the church, found the entrance to the room of books behind the retablo of the altar, and disappeared. The two sextons, gibbering their own narishkayt nonsense to the saints, had become self-sufficient: they now generated their own fear.

  Once inside the room, I heard my name rising from the shaft in the floor.

  Was it the devil himself, maybe? Takeh, his hacksaw voice of blood and sex and velvet had beckoned me to the basement many times before.

  Nu, who else? It was Moishe.

  Sometimes one is struck by a great idea. I pulled the silk cords like worms from the waists of a few red robes and knotted them together. I tied one end to a table and dropped the other down the shaft. The cord klopped Moishe on his Yiddisher kop. Moishe rubbed his head, then began to climb.

  Which reminds me:

  Two lengths of thread meet at the end of the tallis—the prayer shawl—of the Chief Rebbe of Warsaw.

  “Hey, sweet string,” one says to the other. “I’ve been looking for a single bisl of tassel just like you. Are you unattached?”

  “I’m a frayed knot,” the other says.

  So, you’ve heard it. Still, a story helps you not to brech when times are tough. It keeps your kishkas inside, where they’re supposed to be.

  Moishe pulled himself out of the shaft. “The coffin is below,” he said,

  “Empty?” I asked. It wouldn’t do for our books to share their berth with a corpse.

  He looked at me. “Gevalt!”

  Sha. He had the chutzpah to offer early retirement to a member of the clergy but not the beytsim to open a forgotten casket in the nether dark of the cathedral? But it’s as they say, Az di bubeh volt gehat beytsim volt zi geven mayn zeydah. If my grandmother had them, she’d be my grandfather.

  We proceeded with our plan. If the coffin were occupied, we’d wish its resident zay gezunt and commend him to the floor.

  Moishe gathered the imprisoned books into a sack that we’d filched from Doña Gracia’s pantry. Then he lowered it into the hole and shimmied down the rope. He was soon born again and back at the shelves refilling the sack. Three more times and we were both in the basement ready to screw our beytsim to the sticking place and open the casket. We were quite like the two sextons: afraid of the shadows cast by our own fear.

  There was a scuttling as Moishe lifted the lid. A rat ran from behind the coffin and into the darkness. Thanks God, the casket, Got tsu danken, was empty. The only thing worse than finding a body in a coffin is finding half a body.

  Moishe filled the coffin with the books. He left a small space.

  I flew in.

  He began nailing the casket closed.

  A terrible sound.

  I hoped—keneynehoreh—it was the only time that I heard it from this side. But, takeh, what’s worse than hearing your own casket being nailed shut?

  Not hearing it.

  Moishe donned one of the robes and pulled the cowl low over his face. Then, disguised as Padre Moishe, he went to speak to the two trembling sextons.

  Moishe, newly consecrated canon of the Chutzpenik Church.

  “This very night, I have received orders from Torquemada himself,” he told them in a deep, Inquisitorial voice. “The heretical body in the casket is a cancer on the Church. It must be removed and buried in unconsecrated ground immediately.

  “And how could you have been so derelict in your duty to Their Highnesses, His Holiness the Pope, and indeed the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost Itself not to have noticed the secret chamber of the Judaizers right beneath your incense-breathing noses and behind the back of the Holy Virgin Mary, as if she didn’t have enough to do being the mother of God?”

  They would question less if accused.

  Soon I heard voices. Then the coffin was lifted from the floor.

  “By Santiago, if this sinner doesn’t weigh as much as two Jews.”

  “You’re certain there’s just one in here?”

  “He must be have been filled up right to bursting with heresy.”

  My pallbearers hauled the coffin up the stairs. Several sharp turns as we manoeuvred out the door and around the back of what I assumed was the Virgin.

  “This sinner,” Moishe said, giving two smart knocks on the lid, “died without confession and shall soon take transit to hell.”

  As planned, I began to voice the sounds of the dead, an ominous below-deck creaking and shuddering.

  “Ghosts and demons fill this box,” a sexton said.

  “I expect it is its damned and undead body stirring, for it wishes to confess and repent,” Moishe said. “We must open it.”

  I redoubled my groaning. A dybbuk was gnawing my kishkas with its stumpy teeth.

  “Dimitte mihi, forgive me,” the other sexton said. “I am afraid.” I heard the quick steps of his retreat. His mother would be surprised to see him at this hour and at this age, and with his nappy needing changing. But we had expected that both sextons would run. We would have to improvise.

  “Open it,” Moishe commanded. The remaining sexton knelt down and began prying open the lid. I burst out, shrieking.

  The sexton fainted.

  Moishe quickly removed the books. He replaced them with the insensate sexton and nailed the lid back on. In the morning, there would be more shreking and shraying—from the sexton waking inside the coffin; from everyone else when they heard him.

  Later, Moishe confessed that he had given the poor boychik some assistance in leaving his fears behind: he’d been kind enough to administer a mighty zets to the back of his head with a silver crucifix.

  A list of properties and dramatis personae present in the current drama:

  A Sexton, comatose and in a coffin.

  A Second Sexton, fear-footed, courage-lost, whereabouts unknown.

  Heretical books piled higgledy-piggledly inside a cathedral.

  Brilliantly insightful African Grey. Strikingly plumed in shades of dawn light. Much admired.

  Fourteen-year-old Litvak. Male. Proto-pirate. Unarmed.

  The sun. Life-giving. Carminizing. Currently rising.

  The scene begins: the books must disappear even as night is disappearing.

  Moishe hid the books in flour sacks behind the sty-fence outside the Catedral. Doña Gracia would soon send men to take them to her ships. In the meantime, the powerful nose-patshing dreck of the pigs would protect the books from discovery. Moishe removed the red silken robes, stuffed them into the flour sacks, and hid them behind the fence.

  And then we walked off into the early morning world of fishermen, bakers, homebound carousers, and privateers of the book.

  Curtain.

  Chapter Fourteen

  In the kitchen, breakfast was waiting. A sweet hormiguilla of honey and hazelnuts. Blood oranges. A mug of cider.

  Doña Gracia waited for us also. It was clear from the deferential scurrying of the servants that she was not often in the kitchen. They brushed their food-stained clothing apologetically, bowing as they hurried to bring succulent shtiklach before her, early morning delights for their Maris Stella Esther.

  “The pearls have been hidden from the swine?” Doña Gracia asked.

  “Four sacks directly under their priestly noses,” Moishe said.

  “Soon there will be the morning delivery to the Catedral,” the Doña said. “The books will be recovered and taken to the wharf to begin their exodus to Morocco. They will again find freedom on Jewish shelves.”

  Then the Doña asked for a reckoning of our safety record. She knew about the previous night’s Jack in the pulpit.

  We told her about this morning’s Jack-in-the-box.

  She laughed, but then became serious. Moishe must leave on the boat. With the death of the priest, it was too dangerous to remain in Spain.

  “I will sail only with Sarah and the Jews of the Catedral. Another Moses helped the people escape, and so, too, will I
.”

  “There’s Moses and there’s Moses,” she said. “You’re a brave boy, but he fought with God in his gloves.”

  “The back of a guard’s head cannot distinguish between ha-Shem and a rock,” Moishe said. “Besides, I know how we may fight fire with equal fire.”

  Crowds would gather around the quemadero. Soldiers. Horses. Priests. Carts. Citizens.

  People carried bread and fruit and wine. Nothing like a little nosh before conflagration and death. Food for thought or torture.

  Men would also bring something to fill their snoot. Bottles of wine and of liquor. If these bottles were filled with oil, and if, all at once, this oil was used to set alight the many carts filled with straw or the hay bales used for seating, it might be that a rescue would be possible amidst the Judgement Day–like agitation of souls, the excitement of bodies, and a mob flashing mad with a fire-ignited panic.

  Fighting fire with fire, Moishe had invented a kind of medieval Molotov cocktail.

  The condemned would be taken to a ship before the Inquisition was able to distinguish ground from sky.

  “Torquemada travels here, to the Seville Catedral, to celebrate an Easter mass with other Inquisitors. You are at great risk. If you will not leave, I will allow you to remain in my home, but only as long as you stay hidden inside and in the room I have given you. Else, you risk discovery and torture and execution for both of us.”

  “I will stay hidden,” Moishe said. “But help me to save the Catedral Jews from the stake. Allow me this.”

  “You will stay hidden,” Doña Gracia said. She would not allow Moishe to play a role in the escape that she was planning. “Then successful or not, you will leave for Morocco on that day.”

  Back in our room, he said, “I will remain hidden here, as the Doña wills it. So hidden that she won’t know when I leave to find Abraham, the shtik dreck uncle of Sarah. Perhaps he suffers from regret. I intend to spare him such tsuris, such woes.”

  “And how will you do this?”

  “A heart that does not beat feels no pain.”

  “Emes,” I said. “It’s true.”

  Like owls and murderers, we slept through the day, waking only when the world was dim and without doubt. Besides, we were so tired we didn’t have the energy to go to sleep. Luckily, it came to us.

  Some food and then we slipped into the moonless night, seeing little but the shapes of the less dark against the deeper dark. Lit only by certainty, we crept like shadows along the alley walls.

  So, emes, it was Moishe who had such certainty. I did not wish to leave our hiding place, to risk our lives, to think only of revenge, but sometimes, thoughts grow legs and carry you forward and you find yourself sneaking through the streets on the shoulder of an impulse, intent on the hunt. All you can do is hold on, try not to end up on the cobbles.

  Abraham.

  What would we do when we found him? Does a dog wonder what it will do when chasing the car?

  “Sarah. She’ll know where he is,” Moishe said.

  We slid along the skirts of the church.

  “Sarah,” Moishe whispered into the opening. “Are you there?”

  Silence.

  Perhaps she had a lunch engagement with the Emperor of Cipangu, or a hair appointment.

  My own feathers prickling my own skin.

  Fear.

  What did they do to her?

  Then her voice. “You shouldn’t be here. It’s dangerous.”

  “I have to ask you something.”

  “You can’t be here. I am shamed.”

  “Not for me. I want to help.”

  Her face, a pale, smudged moon, appeared between the stones, “You must leave.”

  “I’m looking for your uncle. This is because of him.”

  “If not him, then another. Soon it will end for us. You, still, can run.”

  Moishe spoke quietly into the stones. “Kiss me.”

  Moishe. Sensitive as a barrel of pickles.

  Sarah ignored him. “At the residence of the Archbishop, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza. I heard them say that he would be there.”

  “Kiss me,” Moishe said again. “For courage.”

  “Not for courage,” she said and stretched toward him.

  Moishe tried to burrow with great enthusiasm into the side of the church, but, like traitorous crossguards on the hilt of a sword, his shoulders prevented him from plunging fully in. Only his head disappeared into the hole.

  A parrot can only know what a parrot can know. In this case, a chicken-slender tuches communicating moonward with avid calligraphic perturbation. I could not read these nether words. Perhaps contact was made, for though the stones were thick, the necks of Moishe and Sarah, in proportion to their bodies, were not.

  When it emerged, Moishe’s face, like Sarah’s, was pale and radiant.

  Inside him, though this, too, cannot be known from without, adolescent blood, sperm and desire all turned bright silver and quick.

  We flew into the night.

  Chapter Fifteen

  So, nu, if you hadn’t seen the great Cathedral of Seville you might mistake the residence of the archbishop for the actual house of God.

  If God had a proclivity for bull’s-blood red and archways.

  The Palacio Arzobispal. The residence of the Archbishop Diego Hurtado de Mendoza. It’s a very large building, nu?

  And in such a home, Moishe and I had to find a single treacherous Jew. A nebbish in a haystack.

  We had been told that, hidden from view like a Kabbalist’s God, there was an almost-forgotten door at the back of the building and far from the main gate. A small star in the tuches of the night sky. A secret entrance to the rectory.

  Behind the Palacio, a rumplike hill. Moishe and I crawled up the slope. In such situations, my legs were as good as his. I’m not always a clavicle rider. We scanned for an opening and found a door tall as a dog, wide as the stern of a cow. If the stern of a cow were threshold-wide, and Rover were door tall. Moishe, creeping serpentine on his belly to avoid surveillance, reached for the handle. A door in another part of the wall opened. A grave’s worth of light was thrown on the grass. A man stepped into this bright tomb. A priest carrying a lantern. We lay flat and silent as roadkill on a high street. Sometimes, there’s nothing as good as two dimensions.

  The priest turned and our backs were striped with lantern light. A beam-o’-nine-tails.

  “The light of God is upon you,” he said, looking in our direction.

  We remained still as the bones of the dead. Maybe he didn’t mean us.

  Maybe he was rehearsing a sermon.

  Maybe he meant those Jewish pixie dybbuks dancing an estampie near us on the lawn.

  “I see you,” he said. “Do not move.”

  Definitely the dybbuks. We were not moving.

  It would not be long before we wouldn’t be able to move even if we had wanted to.

  Because of fear.

  Because of death.

  The one not necessarily the result of the other.

  He walked toward us. “Speak with me and I shall not speak of you.”

  Moishe stood. “Peace be with you, Father,” he said. “We are lost. We are hungry. We look for help.” Soon he would be telling the priest of the seven little Moishelets, his rope-thin younger brothers who were even more lost and hungry than us.

  “Come inside. I will give you food,” the priest said. “And you shall tell me your story.”

  He set his lantern on a large table and we sat around in its fringes.

  “When they are angry and seek ‘Padre Luis Dos Almos,’ I am the one that hides. What name do you hide from?”

  “Miguel,” Moishe said. “Miguel Levante.” He would hope to pass for this name.

  The priest set out bread and wine. The official nosh of the Church.

  And some pieces of cheese.

  “I have not seen a parrot before, save in a painting,” he said. “Who’s a pretty boy?” He thrust some bread at me.

&nb
sp; Pretty boy? Feh! I should have taken his eyes for grapes, his tongue for a red scarf. But then blindly, and without saying a word, he would have cooked me and I would be soup.

  “What is your name, pretty boy?”

  “Goy,” I spat, naming both him and myself. I had been too long speaking only the mamaloshen to Moishe, and I was angry.

  I knew my name could not be “Aaron.” We were not wearing those feathers. Moishe became Miguel, I’d intended to baptise myself Christian, but not in Yiddish. A Yiddish baptism is hardly a baptism at all.

  “Goy?” Padre Luis asked.

  Moishe smiled at me slyly. What meshugas, what mischief, was he up to?

  “Yes,” he said. “He speaks but little and with limited sense. His name is Goya—in full, ‘Christian Goya’—for when he was the bird of the Goya Family in Zaragoza, if they were not ever vigilant, he would dine upon Eucharist wafers stolen from the chapel. Indeed, it is because of this excess of devotion that he resides no longer with that noble family.”

  I smiled sheepishly.

  If a parrot could be said to be sheepish.

  Or to smile.

  A person regarding the scene would not have known that though the bread and wine were only what they were, there had been a transubstantiation of two of the three at the table.

  We had named ourselves Miguel Levante and Christian Goya.

  For the padre, our Christian names were Lost and Hungry.

  As we ate, I reflected that I must not again permit such an outburst of temper, or no matter the names we were known by, we would not be able to hide, would soon find ourselves tempered by fire.

  What tale should Moishe relate of our history—for the priest would want details, names beyond Lost and Hungry?

  At fourteen he had left the dreary shmatte-cart road-ruts of an insignificant shtetl armed only with a questionable book and a taste for the brine-tart air of the horizons beyond the horizon, only to be whipped as a cabin boy, and find driftwood escape from trade as a slave after shipwreck, then kill a priest, entomb a sexton, liberate what was bound—four sacks of heresy—and now had designs on the traitorous life of a Marrano spy working for the Archbishop and the Holy Inquisition itself, may devils make a coracle of his kishkas, his slime-white spine for a mast.