Yiddish for Pirates(61)

Besides, their silence would protect the others.

The skiffs were hoisted from the brine. Columbus, prophetic Ocean seer, conveyed his orders and the bo’sun—an Aaron to the admiral’s Moses—was his master’s voice, speaking to the hands and causing them to scuttle over the ship like crabs. The anchors heaved, the sheets hauled, the yards lifted, and the sails set. We began searching for other pearls to stud the twin diadems of Spain.





Chapter Two



The three ships sailed, three water-borne Magi from the east. The Ocean Sea was smooth as a river, a delicate robin’s egg blue, the air scented with blossoms of island flowers.

That evening, Pedro Gutiérrez saw a great whale breaching, spouting a fountain of water high into the air. At two bells on dog watch, Rodrigo Sanchez observed several large sea creatures that resembled something between tuskless walruses and great sad bloodhounds. We’d later learn the native name, “manatí,” from their word for breast. An accurate name if one expects to see breasts the size of cows, the colour of stones, floating bloated and amiable around the ocean, a forlorn and loveable expression signalling their harmlessness.

The two Jews were stowed on the Ni?a. We’d been on one of the first skiffs and so were unaware of their true identity. I flew over to see who they thought they were.

And so, I revealed to them that I could speak sense.

At least when I wasn’t feather-puffed geshvollen with stultiloquent blather and narishkayt.

And so they revealed who they were. Samuel and another whom I didn’t recognize named Jucef who had sailed for Do?a Gracia. They were something between ongeblozn angry and befuddled.

“What will we do?” they asked.

“We’ll have the chutzpah to wait until we have a plan,” I said.

Six or seven leagues after we’d observed the frolicking of the seaborne breasts pushing up against the tide, another island rose from the flat chest of the horizon. Columbus christened it Santa María de la Concepción. We continued toward it until the blood-orange sun sank, and we anchored near a cape on the island’s westward end. The following dawn, Columbus sent a party ashore.

And so, the pattern continued.

Several more small islands, though no more congregations of European denomination. Instead, true island people with whom we exchanged hawks’ bells, tchatchkes and chazerai for small pieces of gold and good favour.

“This pig-ringed gold in your nostils, these bangles round your arms, this nugget plugged into your earlobe—from where did they come?” Columbus gestured to the natives in a handjive of international Esperanto.

South, they’d point. South.

It was apparent that there were people who came from that direction paddling in the large boats they called “canoes,” and who came bearing gold.

Or, at least, south was as good a direction as any to send the furry-faced invaders on a wild and golden goose chase.

“Midas can smooch my flea-speckled hiney for all the good this gold will do me,” Jacome scowled, bending over a barrel of manzanilla wine and filling his mug. “But these swinging rope beds, these native ‘hammocks.’ Ah, there’s something to comfort a weary sailor shaken by the tosser surf. Sleep is more good than gold to a dog-tired navvy worn-down by endless deck work and all this ‘finding.’ ”

“Amen,” Moishe said. “To invent the obvious is the mark of a true genius. To reinvent it makes one a god.”

As we landed on each new island, Columbus seized a few more natives. By this time, he was calling them Indios. Indians.

Bet you can’t capture just one.

Besides, what do you get for a king and queen who have everything?

We encountered cotton, silent dogs, the loincloths of pretty island maidelehs, aloe, and the unintelligible singing of birds.

“Ah. This recalls Andalusia in the spring,” Columbus exclaimed, though he must have been referring to a vernal Andalusia of his own imagination. Certainly, the naked Paul Gauguin beauty of the women turned the men’s Iberian peninsulas venal and warm.

There was lush fruit and talk of cannibals. There were new animals to eat.

I sat on Moishe’s ragged shoulder as he rowed a skiff to the shore of what would soon be “Fernandina.” Then the curdling of my own spirit: the scent of death twisted into a braid of smoke, a bloodknot round my brain.

On the beach, skewered bodies and the barbecue of souls—if indeed we parrots have such a weak thing wisped around the spindle of our spines. The native fiends were cooking parrot.

I would rescue, would resurrect those I recognized by scent alone. Their plumes radiant green and blue, their throats red, their beaks Englishflesh pink. I was seized with horror, yet also tender desire. I would salve and groom. Would nestle and preen. Ach, my sheyneh kindred. My petal-florid New World brethren. It had been awhile. I would shtup with grey cloaca your coat of many colours.

Except that you were dead.

Feh.

The soul stirs for the other that is the same.

The skiff bumped into the sand and I woke from my reverie. The beach a Dieppe of death. I threw myself into the air and up over the canopy of trees.

I left the world of men behind.

A long flight of uninterrupted green.

Then there was a river.

Falling from a cleft in the rocks, its water turned to thunder and cloud.