Yiddish for Pirates(43)

“An umglik!” I screamed. A disaster. “Gey kakn af der levoneh! Go shit on the moon!” I shouted.





Chapter Two



I thought the wind my true home, but carried by the banshee breath of the unbridled lost-its-mind middle sea I despaired of the touch of earth or gravity. Tree or silver cage, shoulder or floating corpse: I now wished for such hospitable heavens.

I was days in such windborne purgatory. Then I found myself blown over the shores of an island and able to fly into the protective maw of a cave and, thanks God, the howling finally ceased.

A great fire burned in the centre of the cave. It threw such writhing shadows as would cause Plato to kvell with pride at their form. There was a fragrance of cleft cedar and juniper. Roasting fruit and seed. A woman in long silks tended kebab skewers in the flames. I chaleshed for such food and I approached her. My storm-shaken brain was addled, for I was snatched and stuffed into a cage of wooden bars before I was able not to be snatched and stuffed into such a cage. A pale-skinned man in a dirty white kaftan grinned at me with an off-kilter, gold-toothed smile.

“Welcome,” he said from the free world outside the bars.

With a quick twist of her head, a woman tossed her long hair over her shoulders, walked over and kissed him. “You are quick, Strabo.”

The man looked directly at her. “There are many birds on the island, most, I’d expect, more succulent than this. If it speaks, it can be our companion. If not, our stew.”

He smiled his crooked smile and left, not, I hoped, with the intent of seeking a side dish.

I would not sing for my supper, but to avoid being someone else’s.

“I speak,” I said to the woman, somewhat self-evidently. “I hope that excludes me from the menu.”

She had turned toward the fire and did not respond.

This required some virtuoso sheyneh talking.

“I speak of the storm that has ceased,” I said. “And of the luxuriant wood of alder and poplar and sweet-smelling cypress that grows outside. Of birds, long of wing, which nest there, owls and falcons and sea-crows with chattering, if meaningless, tongues. And I speak of the garden vine, richly laden with grapes, that winds about this hollow cave. Also, I speak of the four fountains in a row, the water of the first flowing into the next. And of the soft meadows of violets and parsley which bloom. And, I say also this, you are intelligent of face, beautiful of form, and your hair is bright morning woven with God’s own shuttle.”

The woman did not respond though this was some first-class talking.

So, nu. I’d try another tack.

“O golden-limbed Calypso, I will tell a tale of my compatriot, Moishe,” I began. “He spent months teaching his parrot to pray. On Rosh Hashanah, the parrot insisted he go to synagogue.

“ ‘Shul is not a place for a bird,’ Moishe said, but the bird protested and so he took the parrot.

“ ‘What’s he doing here?’ the old rebbe said.

“ ‘Rebbe, he can daven. He knows all the prayers.’

“No one believed Moishe, but they let the bird in—as long as he wore a yarmulke. The entire congregation bet against the bird. Twenty-to-one the parrot couldn’t daven. How could a bird daven?

“Service began. There was chanting and praying, but the parrot sat on Moishe’s shoulder. Silent.

“ ‘Daven, you mamzer, daven.’ But the bird said nothing. After the service, Moishe was furious.

“ ‘You putz. I’m ruined. I owe a fortune. Why didn’t you daven?’

“ ‘Don’t be a shlemiel,’ the parrot replied. ‘Imagine the odds we’ll get on Yom Kippur!’ ”

Still the woman said nothing. I was going to be soup.

I watched as she tended to the skewers, imagining them piercing my tender breast. I looked around the cave, planning escape. After some time, Strabo returned, covered in mud and carrying the corpse of a small brown animal, something like a rabbit or what once was one. He was singing but the woman did not turn. It has been said that the future is a woman and it is necessary, if you wish to master her, to sneak up on her from behind. In truth, I know no other way.

Strabo placed the rabbit down, crept behind the woman and embraced her, a move more amorous but as sudden as when he had snatched me.

“Strabo!” she called. “You know I cannot hear you creeping.”

Strabo laughed, though this surely could not have been the first time that he had played this trick.

They fell upon each other and the meat upon the skewer burned as I watched from my cage.

This, then, was my life for five years more. My wings, though not my speech, were clipped. I became a companion of these amorous two, the king and queen, the sole servants, soldiers, serfs, bakers, hunters, fools and lovers on this otherwise humanless isle.

Sometimes I rode the shoulder of her pale king as he travelled about the island hunting and tending to the gardens, sharing a Scheherazade of stories.

Sometimes I would stay with the woman, Liliana, in her elfin grotto. Though she could read the words on the voluble pages of Strabo’s lips, my immutable beak proved inscrutable. And so, for her, I was a friend without language. She sang, simply for the pleasure of singing, a meaningless Bombadil of songs as she moved about the cave, preparing food and keeping their speleological home both spic and span.

I was becalmed in this paradise, fressing on fruits only recently named, wishing to be expelled from this Eden. I wanted the salt slap of the sea, the astringent wave; to be ship-faced or in a storm and on Moishe’s shoulder.