Yiddish for Pirates(73)
“So, nu,” said Isaac the Blind, raising his chicken-bone fist. “We shall fight like Maccabees.”
“And our end shall be Masada.” Shlomo: always ready to rouse a fatalistic cheer.
“But the Captain Rodriguez and his son,” Yahíma said. “Hostages.”
“Fnyeh,” Samuel said. “The Spanish will only discover their false bones and teeth in the flotsam of our cannon-splintered sloop. One reads the guestbook only after battle.”
A pirate ship: a barnacle-keeled kibbutz. A parliament of gonifs and rogues. Yabbering was how we decided our orders.
The Spanish were attacking?
So maybe it’s time for a committee.
While we considered various ingenious nautical subterfuges, Moishe had been gazing at motes in the empty air.
“Take Rodriguez. Bind him over the pisk mouth of a leeward cannon,” he said. “I will take his son in a skiff to the Spanish. Tonight, I am not a pirate but an honourable hidalgo to be received with courtesy.”
Moishe had Shlomo take down our Shmuel-skull and candlesticks, and raise the Spanish flag. Young Rodriguez—Pedro—was a weedy boychik of about seventeen. He was led to the cannon over which his father was tied.
“Father!” he cried, weeping piteously. His father said nothing.
“Why so farklemt?” Moishe said. “We intend only to divide his body to match his duplicitous soul. Unless …”
Moishe rested his hand reassuringly on Pedro’s shoulder.
“This evening, we row over to pay our respects to your uncle, the Capitan General. You will introduce me as Don Miguel de Levante, a hidalgo of Navarre. You will play this spiel of crypto-Jewry until the curtain falls, we return to our ship, then sail to safety. As long as we are betrayed by neither trickery nor chance, this cannon will not be needed and your father will remain unbageled.”
That evening, Don Miguel de Levante and Don Pedro Rodriguez were rowed by some of our crew to the man o’ war, the Encarnación. I travelled on Moishe’s elaborately tailored shoulder, for Moishe was a hidden Jewish wolf in a Spanish captain’s clothing, plain to see as his nose. The big macher Capitan General Don Luis Rodriguez stood impressively on the quarterdeck, dressed ongepatshket Rococco like a Torah in gold brocade and plush velvet. A priest stood beside him.
“Nephew,” Don Luis said.
“My most respectful and loving greetings, Uncle,” Pedro said. Uncle and nephew kissed and embraced. Then, “May I present Don Miguel Sánchez Villalobos de Levante of Navarre. A friend to us in these distant waters.”
Moishe bowed deeply. “Capitan, I am at your service,” he said with the slick grace of a courtier.
Don Luis swept his brocaded arm and introduced the priest who stood beside him on deck. Fray Juan de Las Castillas looked briefly at Pedro and then at Moishe and me for a soul-scouringly long time. Moishe bowed courteously and remained impassive as he was surveyed. Pedro smiled weakly as if to say, “I have the face of a nebbish, how could I have the beytsim to play false?”
“Where is your father?” Don Luis asked. “So far from the land of our birth, he does not greet his own brother?”
“My father offers his most loving recollection and his deepest regrets,” Pedro replied.
“Because of an oppressing fever,” Moishe explained, “he must rest within his cabin.”
“If my brother cannot visit me, then I shall visit him. Let us now board your skiff.” The capitan began to stride aft toward the gangway.
“Don Luis,” Moishe called in a low voice of much urgency, “there is great danger. Our ship is seized, the captain, your brother, held by pirates and slung over a cannon’s muzzle. We dared not divulge this most important truth for the brigands watch us with murderous keen eyes. We were to play as if all were well. Betrayal means a cannonball through his midst. They have sent us on a ruse. You must move as if unaware of this.”
Moishe had gone beyond the rehearsed script. We were only to have pretended to be other than who we were and then return. Don Luis looked to his nephew. The boychik Pedro’s confusion was apparent on his anxious face, though certainly it reflected the tsuris of his father’s plight.
“Early morning,” Moishe said, “these corsairs will storm your ship when all but the watch sleeps without thought of danger.”
“Some accounts of piracy in these Indies have been made,” Don Luis said. “But these only in the tales of explorers—Columbus, Pinzón, others—as apt to liken a fish-filled freshet to a river of gold. We did not know there was truth in these otherwise lies.”
A slight twitch of muscle in Moishe’s mouth betrayed that he kvelled proud that his exploits were known in the courts of Castille and Aragon. Our piracies had left all either marooned or dead. He had not thought that either would be capable of report.
“There is perhaps a means to save your brother and return his ship to his rightful care,” Moishe said.
Don Luis ordered some drink to be brought. Our visit should appear convivial to those paskudnik rogues on the surveilling ship. We toasted to King Ferdinand and to Queen Isabella. Fray Juan raised his mug in a blessing to the Pope. Then several times, he raised his mug again. Then Moishe explained his sneaky sheygets scheme.
Moishe and Fray Juan remained on the quarterdeck. The Spanish slid quietly into the leeside boats, sheltered by the sails, the dark, and by Moishe recounting a big megillah something to Fray Juan, vigorously windmilling his arms like a meshugener Don Quixote. On his shoulder, I exercised great care lest my end resemble nuggets and the feathered snow of pillowfights.