Yiddish for Pirates(39)
Night again.
It was before dawn on the third day, Easter Sunday.
Cimmerian darkness. The hot horse breath of the Andalusian night, a fever dream heavy over the city of Seville. The faint scent of laurel, orange blossom and horse piss.
Footsteps, a distant door opening, the glow of lantern light, then someone approaching our cell. We hoped they were bringing food.
I hid in the corner, covered in darkness and straw.
A section of an old man’s face appeared at the small, barred window. A watery eye, a white eyebrow, the side of a blotched and veiny nose.
The rattle of keys. With some difficulty the man pushed open the cell door with a cassock-covered, spindle-thin shoulder. A monk.
He stood at the threshold and, still in shadow, scrutinized Moishe for a long time.
Finally he shuffled forward, hung his lantern from a hook, and spoke. In the dim light, we saw who it was.
Torquemada, ancient bilious scarecrow of the Tribunal del Santo Oficio. Carrion crow of Paul the Apostle.
“I know who you are,” he whispered to Moishe.
So much for a little nosh, hardtack for the empty kishkas of two heretics.
Moishe stumbled up and onto the bench. He was weak. We had not eaten for two days.
Torquemada lowered himself down onto the bench beside Moishe. In the lantern light, his sallow skin was a wasted land of shadowy hollows.
“The condemned disappear like smoke, leave no bones, no ashes. And you walk into fire and are unharmed. The people speak of miracles. I always thought you would come. Yes, I know who you are. I recognize you, though you are only a boy.”
His penetrating wet eyes were small and dark, windows onto a mind that was a hurricane, its enormous power spinning everything in its path around its vacant centre.
Whatever he thought Moishe was, it was clear to me what he was.
Meshugeh.
Insane.
A small line of spittle found a desiccated fissure and rolled slowly down his chin. Moishe began, “Father, I …”
“Be silent!” he said. “What could you say? I know but too well your answer … Besides, you have no right to add one syllable to that which you have said before. Why should you now return to impede us in our work? You’ve come but for that only, and you know that well. Do you know what awaits you this morning? I do not know, nor do I care to know who you might be: be it you or an image of you only. I have condemned you and you will burn at the stake, the most wicked of all heretics.”
So, nu, they don’t have the Egyptian fire trick out here in Spain? Every conjurer with a match is mistaken for Yeshua, the Messiah?
Though, the matchstick itself would takeh be some trick. It may not be the souls of the dead rising, but it’s the splintery and sulphurous future of firestarting.
Torquemada leaned in close to Moishe. “We are not with you, but with him,” he hissed. “The wise spirit. The dread one. That is our secret. For centuries have we abandoned you to follow him. The people have trusted us with their happiness, their souls, your word, their freedom. And we have helped them. Though I am an old man, a tattered cloak upon a pole, I will live for another thousand years. Oh, it is possible to become ecstatic amid destruction, to rejuvenate oneself through cruelty. You have dared to come and trouble us in our work and so deserve the Inquisitorial fires more than any.”
Moishe remained silent, looking at him, calculating how he could turn this mishugas into an opportunity.
When the world is upside down, it is best to walk on your hands if you want to be king.
Moishe looked penetratingly yet tenderly at this old privateer, for that’s what he was. He would not have hesitated to board Noah’s boat and plunder one of every animal, two if when roasted they were choice. So, too, he was with souls. His letter of marque or holy book was from a brine-dead sea, faded, torn, illegible. The self-serving palimpsest of memory the only legible mark.
Moishe waited, allowing his silence to bloom like a wound. The old man longed to hear his voice, to hear him reply. He’d rather endure words of bitterness and scorn than his silence. I caught Moishe’s sidereal glance at me, a quicksilver glint.
Then Moishe rose to his feet, slowly and solemnly. He bent toward the Inquisitor and softly kissed the bloodless, ancient lips.
The Grand Inquisitor shuddered. A convulsive twitch at the corner of his mouth. He stood up uncertainly, and hobbled to the door, pushing it open.
“Go,” he said to Moishe. “Do not come again … never. Never!”
Moishe walked through the open door and vanished into the darkness. Torquemada shuffled back to the bench and collapsed. His head dropped to his chest and his eyes closed. I could see by the twisting runnels of his forehead that he was suffering. He touched his hand to his lips and was still.
When the sails are down, the wind runs free.
So I took my chance. I flew.
Chapter Twenty-One
Outside I could not find Moishe, but knew he would make for the Guadalquivir River and the ship. I would fly ahead to tell them to wait. He would soon be there.
If they had safely arrived. If they hadn’t already set sail toward Cadiz and the sea.
I rose up into the pearlescent before-dawn light. Soon the sun would rise. Soon the son also: the bright rising of Easter with its banners, music and celebration. But when they rolled aside the saviour’s stone in the mouth of Iberia, we’d be gone.