Yiddish for Pirates(26)

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 Do?a 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. Do?a 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.