Yiddish for Pirates(91)

The crew in our boat rowed furiously toward them.

Another iron ball plunged into the gaping mouth of the sea as we reached the other boat.

Isaac held onto the boat with his single hook.

The cannonball had removed both his legs from his already depleted inventory.

One eye, one arm.

A firkin of blood, much of it now spilling from his body.

Much suffering. We hauled him into the boat.

“I remember,” he said. “My grandfather carved me a little horse. Its shmulky little shoulders, and, after a time, its broken legs. But this little wooden tchatchke looked at me with such tenderness. I kept it close to me. I had nothing …”

He smiled at the memory.

“It waits for me.”

He closed his single eye and died.

Five sailors clung to the gunwales around us. Samuel held onto Luigi del Piccolo, who was too weak to hold on himself.

There was a long sheet coiled in the bow. Moishe passed me one end. “Fly to the island,” he said. “Tie this to a tree.”

I rose then fell, rose then fell. It took me three tries to rise into the air and travel the twenty fathoms to the island. It was three tries also to knot the rope around a mangrove and then alight upon its root.

Several cannonballs crashed into the foliage beside me.

Moishe and the men began hauling on the sheet. Either they would move or the island would.

It was the boat.

It approached the land, barking its nose against mangrove roots. Moishe and the crew scrambled to shore. There was no time to futz around. The Spanish continued to fire and they would soon send crewmen after us.

Samuel, Shlomo and Ham hauled Isaac’s body onto the mangroves. We would hide in the interior of the islet and decide what to do next.

First, though, the wounded must be nursed. Carpentered. Or buried.

At sea, we would have wrapped Isaac in a sail, sewn it up, stitching it—according to tradition—once through the septum of his nose. When we couldn’t spare a sail, we shrouded our dead in a section of Torah scroll and released them to the sea. Luigi would pipe a dirge as they were taken by the water. But now the Spanish were close by. We had but time to carry Isaac to a swamp and cover him in stones.

It’s doubtful that he would have wanted us to say kaddish, but Moishe said the prayer as a stand-in for other words.

“Yisgadal veyiskadash shmey raboh,” he said.

“Omeyn,” we answered.

With Isaac gone, we were one short of a minyan, the required ten for prayer.

“What does it matter?” Shlomo said. “Where’s our eleventh putz-finger God?”

“We speak even if no one hears,” Samuel said. “So. Azoy. We hear.”

“And that helps?” Shlomo said. “Let’s ask Isaac and see what he hears.”

Luigi waved him away from Isaac. “My father would say that we have eternal life. Until we die. And we have God. Until we look for Him.”

“Perhaps,” Moishe said. “But my father used to say, ‘A question is its own answer.’ And I’d ask, ‘What does that mean?’ And he’d say, ‘Exactly.’ ”

We began again to make for the lagoon, bushwhacking our way through the mangroves and the godless synagogue of leaves.

The lagoon. Rivulets of light eeled over the rippled sand and through the turquoise water. The soughing air. One sigh fits all. Or causes a satisfied susurration so deep in the mouth, it’s in your tuches.

The men dove into the water and began dog-paddling to the main island. Moishe swam on his back, kicking with fury, his arms raised above the water, holding his arquebus aloft like the Lady of the Lake brandishing a sword.

I flew.

The men clambered out of the lagoon, the water varicosing down their skin.

“Hit zich! Look out,” Samuel shouted. He pointed at a dark shape that flickered between the trees like images in a flip book.

The men pulled out their wet dirks and cutlasses. Moishe loaded his arquebus, the only sailor who had had sufficient seychl to keep his weapon dry.

Was a man running in the woods? Had the Spanish already landed? The strange noises of the island became amplified by our apprehension.

“Hell is empty and the dybbuks run free,” Samuel said.

“Nu,” Moishe said. “We can stand tsitering quaking on the shore. Or we can hide in the woods. Where they can’t see the Yids for the trees.”

We crossed the beach and headed into the dark green of the forest. Our landmark for orienteering: the tall tree south of the valley.

This was finding a needle in a pine forest.

I flew above the forest canopy. The two cheeks of the island rose round and verdant. Between the two, a valley. A river quick with rapids and waterfalls.

Is the river the movement or the water? Is the story the words or what happens?

Without either one—nu—no river.

In the distance, several trees rose above the others, bodies both dark and colourful emerging from the tangle of its branches.

I saw no sign of our ship. The Spanish had either taken it and sailed away, or sank it.

I flew back into the forest and found my captain’s shoulder. Which tree marked the yud under which the books would be found?

In which direction would we travel?

Forward. We could revise that later.

Shlomo walked before us, chopping through the brush with a machete-like blade. We trudged inside the forest’s closed and clammy hand.