Yiddish for Pirates(16)

It was the inside of a huge city square, the vaulted ceiling unreachable as heaven. Each stone block in the vast walls was a square meal, an unfed belly, a tangible monument to what the church had and the people did not.

And, takeh, I wasn’t thinking incense.

We walked down the main nave toward the rumble of prayer and distant singing. Toward the altar, there was a sea of candles, each flame a bright wave.

Even the dried-out beef-jerky soul of an alter kaker parrot became dazed by the intoxicating lotus-scented pong of Mother Church in such a Xanadu of thurible-fumed fantasmagoria.

Nu? Isn’t it time for a thurible pun?

“As the sea rages, my soul is jubilant,” Moishe muttered to an ancient stooped beadle. He stared blankly back at us, then motioned to the candles, offering Moishe the opportunity to light one.

“Crazy? Then try faith,” the beadle might have been thinking.

Another man stepped out of a shadowed archway.

“As the sea rages… Moishe began.

“My soul is jubilant,” the man continued. “For my ship draws near to the sanctuary of her God.” The lock clicked. The right key in the right lock. The man began walking away. The light was dim at the far end of the transept.

A Madonna, large as an ogre and made of dark wood. The man made sure the coast was clear, then touched his hand to the smooth underside of Mary’s foot, and extracted a key, a heretical splinter hobbling the Mother of God.

“In the other foot, a mezuzah,” he whispered. “The lady, she is our doorway. Come with me.” As we walked by, he touched the mezuzah foot and murmured a prayer. We followed him behind the statue where he unlocked a small door. We stood together on a landing. He locked the door behind us. The right key, the right lock. We were in darkness.

“My name,” he said, “is Samuel.”

We felt our way down the stairs.

Our final step was into a soft uneven floor.

“Sand,” Samuel said, “so we make no noise.”

We crossed the room in the twilight that fell from an opening above. Another door and we had entered a room bright with menorah candles and torchlight.

Moishe looked amazed at this subterranean synagogue.

“The fox doesn’t look for chickens in his own foxhole,” Samuel said.

Half a dozen men sat around an immense table.

“Our souls should be quite jubilant today,” Samuel said to them. “Look what washed up.”

At the end of the table, a desiccated figure stitched from driftwood, a cloud, and an old saddle. Standard issue ancient rebbe and the doppelganger of the rov in Lisbon. Rabbi Daniel.

“You brought a friend from Africa?”

He meant me.

“We can trust him? In Ecclesiastes, it says, ‘A bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter.’ And this particular matter is highly secret.” The rebbe eyed us intensely.

“I wouldn’t want this bird to trade our lives for a cracker. Unless it were matzoh. Ahh, that I could understand. I could be Judas myself for a bisl matzoh.”

He smiled, then offered Moishe a seat. “You’re a brave boy. The officers of the Inquisition are everywhere: the thousand faceted-eyes of an excremental fly.”

We were brought some bread, wine and soft cheese. “Eat.” Moishe set me down on the table and tore off a shtikl bread.

The men looked on approvingly as we noshed.

“And now,” the old rabbi began. “The books. It is as they say, if you drop gold and books, pick up the books, then the gold. So, show us.”

Moishe reached around to take the books out of the shouldersack that he’d hidden beneath his smock.

A look of shrek horror. Oy Gotenyu! The sack was gone. He had had the books when he rode into the city. A broch—the horse! He’d abandoned the horse, tied up near the quemadero. In his horror, he’d run without any thought of old dobbin. Without any thought at all. By now, some gonif had rode off with the nag.

But the books?

Before we’d dismounted and went to watch the auto-da-fé, Moishe had hidden behind a wall, taken the books from the saddlebags and stuffed them into the concealed sack. But the sack was gone.

Rabbi Daniel and the other men looked at Moishe expectantly. He looked from the old rabbi to the floor, considering what to do.

“I … I must find the books.” He scooped me up and ran to the stairs. “Diego,” he whispered hoarsely. “The cutpurse must have robbed me when we klopped into him.”

It was the oldest trick in the book. Here, would you like to buy these flowers? And while you were leaning in, snorting their scent into your shnozz, you were relieved of the responsibility of your gold. Only it was the pretty pink flower of Diego’s fist that went up my beak, and he had swiped something more valuable—and more dangerous—than gold.

We were in the dark at the top of the stairs. Moishe grabbed the handle but the door wouldn’t move. Vo den? Of course. It had been locked behind us. For safety.

“The books?” Samuel was behind us. “Where are they?”

Moishe burbled an explanation.

“If the Inquisitors find them—and they generously grease the hands of those who place such things in their grasp—then we will—you will—be in great danger. They will search for you and your end will not be good. Was there anything beside the books? The letter?”