Yiddish for Pirates(31)

She left us in the library.

We ate the remaining dates.

Then we looked at the shelves. Each book, like a living being, from hand-held sextodecimo sparrows to the ostrich torsos of folio slabs, the soft unarmoured flesh of the interior. The binding as skin. I think to myself, “Gotenyu, that could’ve been me.”

But it’s a mammal-wrapping of leather, not the feathers of birds. In Latin, these books are incunabula—swadding clothes, a cradle. Every bound book a baby, dropped into the world, waiting to be understood.

And there were maps.

Moishe unrolled some of these ribbon-bound charts. Do?a Gracia’s library had few practical aids to navigation; instead, it was mostly maps of beautiful nonsense—a cholent of legends, ancient books, explorers’ reports, and the desires and superstitions of kings, islands of real experience and archipelagos of the fanciful mixed together in a speculative and hopeful ocean.

Skinned creatures with no body. A dream of what is or might be. Some small truth stretched thin, a tattooed shade. Hope and fear transformed horses into camelbacked leopards with the wings of a dove, their riders saddled below them, feet pointing toward the sky.

“Aaron,” Moishe said. “Look.” He unrolled a large chart and surveyed the waters. “The world is filled with wonders.” He was still the Bar Mitzvah boy, longing for adventure. His finger sailed the waves of the ocean sea. Beyond the Canary Islands to the outrigger islands of Cathay and Cipangu: Anquana, Candyn, Tristis, Java Major, Neacuram and Moabar, the possessions of the Great Khan crowding the left side of the map. Regions wickered by eel-like creatures and Antipodean half-men grimacing from their chests.

“Yet the world is as small as Columbus told us,” he said. “If only because it is crammed ongeshtupted with marvels. We should take the Jews from the Catedral to this Naye Velt, these new places.”

“Oh it’d have to be a bahartsteh New World to have such people as people in it.”

“Bahartst—brave—why?” I said.

“Where has it gone well with people?”

We returned to our room and gave sleep to our eyes, each of my six eyelids to slumber. We’d have a night’s worth of day and wake with the moon.





Chapter Seventeen



Moishe woke me. The kitchen was empty, except for moonlight. It became emptier after we filled ourselves with food. Oranges and the delicious relic of a gumbo of stewed meat, rice and beans.

“I must tell Sarah about her uncle.”

“You’re meshugeh. We can’t leave. Do?a Gracia warned us that—”

“How can I stay here like a shmendrick, shtum silent as a blintz.”

“Azoy, if it’s filled with anything, your head is filled with soft cheese.”

The street was deserted. Like our good sense, we disappeared into the night.

This path of moon shadows was becoming familiar, if more dangerous. The Easter preparations had begun. The road had been cleared for the Good Friday processions. No dreck. No gold. No rotting food.

Moishe crawled toward the cellar of the church. There was little sound. The susurration of the wind in the leaves of trees. A distant bird. The rabbi’s thin voice chanting. A subterranean muezzin calling us. We could see that he was wearing tefillin, the small boxes strapped to his forehead and arm. His shadowy figure rocked forward and back in the darkness.

He stopped. “Who’s there?” He sounded both anxious and exhausted.

“Rabbi, it is Moishe. We did not mean to interrupt your prayers.”

“You are not alone?”

“My parrot.”

“Of course. I think he is a pinteleh—the dot of a vowel—perched on your shoulder. He helps you, no?”

“Yes. We did not mean to disturb you.”

“It is good. I should rest. I have been davening since … well, since before I was a Bar Mitzvah. And I’m tired … But it puts me together with my people. I am with them. And I am near to ha-Shem, the Almighty. He gives me strength for the day. Soon I will be yet nearer to him.

“It’s almost Passover and I expect you wonder Ma nishtanah halailah hazeh? ‘Why is this night different from all others, and why do I wear the tefillin and repeat the morning prayers?’ ”

“Yes, I …”

“Well, my boy, we are like slaves in Egypt but I am not certain that the Angel of Death will pass over us this time, and so I pray as if with each prayer, it is the morning of a new day. As the Mishnah says …”

I could tell that Rabbi Daniel had become half fardreyt—unmoored by waiting for the upcoming storm. How would I feel two days before my expected execution?

“Rabbi, we have the books that were in the Catedral. Do?a Gracia will help you and the others escape. There is a boat …”

“Shh. Boychik. Even Moses couldn’t free our people without ha-Shem. I remember …”

“But I have news to tell you. Abraham is dead.”

“Abraham?

“I killed him.”

“My boy …”

“He betrayed you. All of you. And Sarah. He—”

“Only ha-Shem can take vengeance. The Lord came down when Samson sought revenge for the loss of his eyes … And though Abraham died with both eyes, the Mishnah says, ‘Whoever destroys a single life is as guilty as though he had destroyed the entire world; and whoever rescues a single life earns as much merit as though he had rescued the entire world.’ But it is not a matter of simple mathematics, one eye given for another taken. I recall that in Leviticus …”