Yiddish for Pirates(69)

We had signed articles, each sailor inscribing his name or as much of it as he chose to remember. Spoils were divided equally, every man, woman, or parrot—black, white, tawny, or grey—entitled to the same share. Unless there were loss of limbs. The crew’s limbs. We expected some loss in our adversaries. A sailor who was injured and lost an arm or leg received additional money. Severance pay.

We were the governors of a nation that numbered only governors. Each person aboard helped draft our script. Over which horizon would we buckle, which swash, which trembling words of capitulation would we pillage from the mouths of which quaking crew? Whose kishkas would scabbard our swords, whose hatches breach for plunder?

Moishe was captain because of ballots cast by the crew. An immediate referendum could be called if his leadership was questioned. How did this cheder-bocher schoolboy turn captain? Takeh, shtetl-night was day here in the perilous land. But Moishe had wit, seychl, sense, decency, swagger, kindness, words, and the ability to pull endless treasure from behind avaricious Spanish ears. So, nu, in the country of the blind, the quick-tongued, one-nippled mensch was king. Our country: the blind, the scarred, the single-legged, the whole or half meshugeh, the mute, the lost, the faithful, the angry, those who witnessed or suffered, those who remembered or would not remember, the bereft, the curious, the other.

I haven’t told about the others in our crew, but ach, the skittish nag of my tongue bolts away without the cart of sense. We are pirates and we have a profession to uphold: at this moment, there’s a ship heaving up over the horizon and it’s loaded with gold.

We remained cloaked by an island cove until the Spanish sailed close. “All hands,” Moishe cried and we unfurled every sail so the wind could breathe life into our Golem of a ship.

Yahíma sprung up the rigging. Isaac the Blind readied the cannon, a variety of Great Turkish bombard we’d Jerez-rigged from a cauldron. Shlomo hauled up our flag, a linen tablecloth plundered from the cabin of a Spanish captain sent to Hispaniola. Through the years, we had flown under many flags.

A skull in a skullcap kippah over crossed candlesticks.

The image of the hand brandishing a curved sword, the single all-seeing eye in the centre of the palm, never blinking. Keneynehoreh. May I be protected from the evil eye. Or, nu, at least let me be on its side.

Now we sailed under the Great Eye of Providence, radiant beams like bolts of lightning flashing out from its socket, the eye itself hovering over an Egyptian pyramid. We were once slaves in Egypt. And we built this.

And now we will take apart your empire, brick by brick.

At some point, one of the crew made the eye bloodshot.

In Egypt there was sand and dust.

And here, there is such schnapps as to conjunctivate a sailor’s eye.

It was a cloudless day. The waves scalloped high as a man’s shoulders. There were dolphins in the cove. They had simple, shlemiel smiles and they never looked our way.

Sometimes we began with a speech from Moishe to those we intended to board. Sometimes this greeting was accomplished by the brazen sholom aleychem of cannon, and today we chose that sermon of fire. Isaac sent a tsimmes of burning fragments into the Spanish rigging and lit up the sails as if it were sunset.

Soon we were broadside and Moishe placed his boot on their gunwales.

“So maybe you could invite us in for a little something?” Then he leapt aboard. Jacome followed, calling out, “Lokshen-spined pasta-backs, we shall sauce you in your own blood.”

I had a claw in the Spanish captain’s eye before he had decoded the metaphor. Yahíma sent arrows into the shoulders of the crew. Fernández became a pointillist, jabbing his dirk into whatever soft flesh was before him. Ham cleared a path with a broad axe as if clearcutting Pinocchios.

There were native Taino slaves as well as Africans chained together on the foredeck.

“Nu, vos macht a Yid? Howaya?” Moishe said to them as Ham and Samuel began severing them one from another, chopping the links of the chains like pretzels.

Some panicked and jumped into the water before they had been unchained.

Moishe seized a nobleman hidalgo by the lacy throat. His cutlass sought the man’s fleshy womb and there began to goulash.

As the man began his slow fall to the planks, Moishe raised the cutlass above his head; a crescent moon to be seen by all. Then he licked the blood from its blade and began, “Baruch ata Adonai…” The prayer for wine.

The Spanish did not end their resistance then, though much conviction drained from their fight.

Madness is more frightening than swords.

So, in this case, was feigned madness. When it came to mooning an antic disposition, Moishe was ever a Hamlet among lunatics.

Piracy is as much public relations as plunder.


It was dark before we could rest.

Blood poured from Ham’s thigh. In the confusion Jacome had cleaved Ham’s leg with his sword. Samuel was bereft of several fingers, his career as a maker of dog shadows cut short.

There was much gold. Silver. Meat. Wine.

Under the bright watch of our swords and arquebuses, the Spanish crew heaved our plunder into our ship while we offered the slaves some wine.

Freedom can be thirsty work.

By the end of our battle, we had new crew. Various slaves, both Ethiopian and Caribbean. An Italian cooper. We imprisoned the captain, Capitano Rodriguez, and his son in our hold.

“A bisl something for later,” Moishe said.