Yiddish for Pirates(20)

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 Do?a 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 Do?a 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



Do?a 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.

“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 Do?a Gracia?”