Yiddish for Pirates(3)
Most intriguing were the strange drawings. Charts that seemed to diagram the architecture of heavenly palaces or the dance steps of ten-footed angels. Mysterious arrays of letters, the unspeakable and obsidian incantations of demons. And, most captivating of all, what appeared to be maps of the parallel world itself, filled with ring upon ring of concentric circles, rippling out from the beginning of creation and the centre of everything, as if one fine morning God had cannonballed down from everywhere and nowhere and into the exact middle of the primordial sea.
But perhaps, Moishe wondered, these maps represented the actual earth, the alef-beys of cryptic markings, boats floating upon the waves of a vast ocean, searching for the edges of hidden knowledge.
It was as if Adam and his wife, Eve, had found a map instead of an apple, there in the centre of the garden. Instead of good and evil, they had discovered a map of Eden, the geography, the secrets, the true limits of Paradise and the Paradise that lies beyond.
Maybe that is why his father kept this book hidden where no one—not the rabbis or the shammes or the other men—could find it.
So Moishe took the book and left.
He followed the wide road to the market town of Kaunas and from there to the seaport of Memel. The sea was the widest road. He would follow it, a bottle looking for a message and new shores. Great ships filled the harbour, men crawling over them like flies on a shipment of modern-day pants or—abi gezunt—sailors on a shiksa. Decks were swabbed, rigging secured, barrels and chests heaved along docks and over gangplanks. Men with fruit-leather faces and pigtails close-talked with great weaselly machers in greasy coats, furtively scanning the docks for other great weaselly machers in greasy coats as they exchanged shadows for shine. Broken-toothed taverns lined the wharves, and farmishteh shikkers stumbled in and out, not knowing which direction was up, yet maintaining an unsteady relationship with down. Vendors held stickfuls of pretzels and bagels, stood beside barrels of brine or behind braziers roasting meat. There were other boys shlepping sacks containing all of their world that was worth carrying, seeking a shipboard life as a cabin boy or powder monkey. Several boys, stooped low with their sacks, entered one particular frowsy tavern tumbled between others and Moishe followed.
They formed a shlumpy pack before a table where a huge sailor held court, leaning back, pork-hock hands on his enormous thighs.
“Boys. Why should ye be cabin boys on my ship?” His bristly steak of a face shook as he spoke. “Tells me and maybe ye shall be one.”
Ten boys, tall and short, smooth-faced or pocked, had gathered ’round.
“I’m a strong boy and honest you can be sure,” said a tiny pisher with all the resolution his unbroken voice could muster. “I’ll serve true and learn well,” he said, standing tall.
“You’re a hearty lad, I’s can tell,” the sailor said. “Spoke right up. Ye be welcome. Look to The Sea’s Pride early tomorrow and ye’ll sail with us.”
“You,” the sailor said to another. “D’ye have some teeth?” The boy grimaced, showing such teeth as he had. “My father went to sea, and this I aim also.”
“Family,” said the sailor with a grin wide as a plank. “We’re all barnacles stuck to the rump of family. Tomorrow. The Sea’s Pride.” He waved the boy away. “And you?” he pointed at Moishe. “Ye be a big lad.”
Moishe wasn’t a Jew.
Until he spoke.
“Vell,” he said. “A ponim yeh. It seems.”
As soon as he said it, Moishe realized how foreign his words sounded. Like having a mouthful of something you just realized was treyf, not kosher.
The big man paused.
Moishe was about to run.
“We never had a Chosen People on board. Ye do something nasty? Need to make a quick exodus from Egypt?”
“No … I …”
“You Jews are clever and I don’t knows I trust ye. But there be no baby’s blood on board and if you turns out not honest, we’ll beat you till ye bleed like the baby Jesus hisself.”
That night Moishe slept under a pile of sticks and broken bottles in the lee of a dung heap behind the tavern. At first light, he made his way to The Sea’s Pride to leave the solid earth behind.
Chapter Two
To be new to the sea is to have your kishkas become the waves themselves. For days it was white water inside of Moishe, and a team of pugilists bailed out his insides with their convulsions. He’d be a new man, keneynehoreh, for nu, what could be left of the old one after such puking?
The Sea’s Pride was sailing for Portugal, laden with cargo and a crew of the feckless, the brave, the poor, the drunk and the honourable both, as well as seasoned sailors preserved by salt, farmisht first-timers, and the master, purser, quartermaster, bo’sun, the captain and his parrot, an African Grey, he who has lived to tell the tale.
Moishe’s commission was to serve the master, the big macher sailor who had hired him. In his cabin, the master had created his own private Versailles. Instead of a crew’s shambles of piss buckets, hammocks and a salmagundi of sailors’ chazerai, he had stored an abundance of liquors, sweetmeats, sugar, spices, pickles and other things for his accommodation in the voyage. He had also shlepped a considerable quantity of fine lace and linen, baize and woollen cloth. Not for him the usual shmatte slops of the everyman mariner. And besides, these things could buy him passage on the fleshy sloops of night women or be traded without tax or duty for gold or drink in port.