Yiddish for Pirates(60)

He wiped his hand across his damp black forehead, revealing an olive blaze of naked skin.

“When we saw the island, we sang as Miriam sang when the Children of Israel crossed the Red Sea.”

Samuel: “We did not expect the Spanish or their Inquisition.”

“Columbus has no interest in Inquisition,” Moishe said. “He sails only to fill his map with discoveries, his pockets with gold, and his ears with praise.”

“Still, we are prisoners escaped from the Spanish crown and their attempt to bake us. We would be captured if recognized,” Samuel said.

“Pitch-daubed in island haute couture as you are, I warrant you safe,” Moishe said. “You cut a fine figure in such fashion.”

Benito: “We had little choice seeing the Spanish ships rising over the horizon.”

Samuel: “We thought our brains boiled by hunger and dread.”

Benito: “We hoped the ships would sail past. When they sailed toward shore, we prepared our disguise.”

“We are lost, yet do not wish to be found,” Samuel said. “But how long can we pretend to be what we are not?”

“Samuel means that we are glad to see you. We are grateful that you saved us in Spain,” Benito said. “But we hope you will leave. We hope your Captain Columbus hurries on his search for real islanders, the mainland, or gold.”

“Ay,” Samuel said. “For already, we are part found out. We were gobstruck to see the Spanish. More gobstruck still, to hear Hebrew. So one of us—Salomon—blurted back Hebrew to the translator who spoke the holy tongue.”

“Let’s hope his memory was drowned in wine,” Benito said.

“Today, it surfaced,” Moishe said. “But perhaps when sober, with no new Hebrew, he’ll think it but the meshugas phantasms of wine-brained shikkery.”

There was a borasco of shouts and bootfalls. Columbus had returned.

“Tell us quickly: the reb wants to know if in these last years, you have knowledge of Sarah … or more exactly, of her father’s books,” Samuel said.

“Ach, my Sarah,” Moishe said wistfully. “I thought we would be married.”

“First love,” I said. “He carries it with him like a fracture that never properly heals. Or like syphilis.”

I did not intend then to give tongue to what intelligence I had gained, but, na, there’s no greater ache than an untold story.

When you need to plotz, you need to plotz: I told them what I’d heard of Do?a Gracia, how she’d married a Neapolitan count so his money could help Jews. Of Sarah and her capture, of the books and theirs. I had not heard of either since they’d been carried up the gangplank and gone south with the Turks toward an uncertain future.

I did not mention what was inside either the books or Sarah. Those were texts I did not yet know. But, I worried for the tsuris that might come to both.

The Shlepp-and-Kvetchit Jews looked at me with some surprise. They did not know that, though a bird, I was a mensch. That I could speak with intelligence.

Azoy? Were they the only ones who sometimes had needed to hide their words inside?

Down the beach, several small mammals had been hunted and hog-or perhaps opossum-tied to several sticks bridged between sailors’ shoulders. These big macher huntsmen had likely blasted arquebus shot through the fist-sized kishkas of these small wild things, now as much hole as not.

The rabbi-as-island-chief led the procession, shaking his fists and frightening the clouds with a whinneying recitation of his ninnyhammer Torah.

“And,” Benito said, as he scuttled back toward them. “It’s not Rabbi Daniel but his brother, Nalfimay. Rabbi Daniel was pitched into the sea. A lifetime of wisdom lobbed over the gunwales like bad meat.”

“Such evil.” Samuel spat into the surf and ran after him.

A fire was made. Opossums were cooked.

Kosher?

Opposums have no hooves and do not chew cud.

So: not kosher.

But, nu, what’s a bit of Leviticus when you’re hungry, and the nearest rabbi is on the sea floor. Besides, the best way to appear as if a place is home is to eat some of it.

And so, the Jews ate.

I myself was glad to be considered companion and not poultry—keneynehoreh—and always ready to speak against the roasting of my soul, the fricassee of my mortal body for shmaltz and fislach, fat and chicken feet.

The New World Jews and conquerors gathered together on the shore. Moishe was able to signal to Samuel in a clandestine semaphore of eyebrow and finger indicating that he would communicate nothing of his true identity and yet would strive to return. And soon after, Columbus, after having stuck his colonizing toe in what he took to be the door to Cathay, Cipangu, or an outlander island to the Indies, had his men row back to the ships and ready themselves. We’d sail to stick that same toe in other and, he hoped, more golden sands.

And what else? Just a little thing. Columbus had two burly bulvans of the crew grab two islanders, Geronimovitz and Dances-with-Wolfowitz, tie them up pretty in boat ropes like powder kegs stowed in the orlop, and stick them in the bow.

When you travel, it’s important to return with souvenirs.

The two said nothing to him. What should they say?

Won’t you be disappointed when it rains and—you call this a gift?—all you’ve got is two clean Yids?