Yiddish for Pirates(98)

And so we did not go back to the island for the rest of the crew. Instead, we turned our stern to the shore, and we raised sail toward the horizon. Utina nestled in the quarterdeck, navigating: watching the shape of waves, the scent of wind, the curl of cloud above us. They say that at any time, such spirit wayfarers can detect five different currents in the open water. And many more of ghosts. They draw islands out of the sea, tectonic Prosperos, reverse dowsers.

Utina imagined us a path beyond the horizon and soon we were beyond land, except as it appeared in the second sight of her internal compass.

Dawn. Immense veils of spray rose against our bulwarks and were caught by the wind and whirled away. Bars of purple cloud stretched before us and the green water frothed with delirium. The sky became mauve and scarlet in the east, kishka-coloured. Then west off the starboard bow appeared a vast mass, furlongs in length and breadth, the pale hue of a maideleh’s thighs. It floated on the water, its innumerable long arms radiating from its centre and curling and twisting like a nest of snakes, a monster of flying lokshen. It had no perceptible front: like Adonai, all was face or not-face. It seemed blind and without instinct, more island than living thing, but it undulated on the billows, an unearthly, formless, chance-like apparition. Then without warning, the water stilled and it disappeared.

“There,” Utina said, pointing with her gnarled alteh kokeh finger, which was a trick finger, not pointing forward, but askew like Adam looking sneakily Eve-ways when God in Eden came down to kvetch, post-apple.

Utina with her eye fixed on an indistinct place on the long coastline.

Soon enough, Ponce de Leon would call it La Florida and bring Christianity, cattle, horses, sheep, lemons, pistachios, discount stores, disease, the Spanish language. Death.

People would come here to die or not to die. Shalom. Who could tell?

But now, there were no boats in the ocean, nor sign of people on the rock-strewn beach as we dropped anchor. We climbed into a skiff and rowed to shore.

Utina divined a trail into the seamless jungle and we followed.

“We’re bilge-headed coffinwits. Soon they jump from the shadows and morcellate us for barbecue,” Jacome said.

“They could,” Utina said. “Or I could.” And pulled back her cloak to reveal a stubby musketoon. Jacome reached for his cutlass, but Moishe raised his hand.

“Shat. Hust.” Shh. Be calm.

“Why am I taking you to the Fountain?” Utina asked then smiled. “Ach, I can’t help myself.”

We continued to walk, Jacome glowering as we shlepped through the tangle of vines and leaves.

The sun boiling high above us, we finally came to a clearing. A thin river curled white over boulders then ran into an opening in a rocky mound.

Utina reached into deep green boughs of tree and pulled down a yellow fruit. She sat on a dry boulder, took a short knife from her cloak and began peeling it.

She speared a dripping segment on the bladepoint.

“Pond-apple?” she offered.

Sha. Was this a stalling tactic or dramatic prelapsarian irony?

Moishe looked vaguely at the river, then accepted a piece of the fruit. What was he thinking? Ver veyst? Who knows? One may have a head filled with boiling soup yet look like a kneydl. A dumpling. He said gornisht. Nothing.

“Where’s the Fountain?” Jacome asked, not one to let catering get in the way of eternity.

“Inside the cavern,” Utina said. “You find what you seek.”

Still, the evasive half-answers of a tzadik.

There was a hot spring that burbled up from the cenote, its waters rising from a crack deep in the earth.

“Now,” Jacome said. “Where’s the door?”

On the top of the mound were several small openings. We peered in but could see nothing. Moishe dropped a rock into one. A minute passed and there was an almost inaudible splash.

The only other entrance was to follow the river into the cave, but the churning water would shlog smash you against the rocks. You’d end up the kind of immortal where you don’t live forever because you’re already dead. Unless you could hold your breath for ten minutes and avoid the rocks.

“The water was not always so strong,” she said.

Ach. As helpful as bloodletting a corpse.

“We’ll dam the river,” Jacome said. “We’ll move boulders.”

Moishe took several sacks of arquebus gunpowder out of the bag hanging from his shoulder. They would blow their way to kingdom come.

I flew to the top of the mound. I’d squeeze myself into one of the openings.

Reverse birth.

It’d be almost entirely dark inside, the small holes like stars far above. Perhaps I could find the Fountain and bring back its waters.

One squeeze of Aaron, the immortal sponge, and they’d forget their pain. Or live forever.

I eyed a likely hole behind a jagged rock.

Perhaps if I weren’t so ample. If I’d watched myself: Did I need to do all that fressing? Still, I thought I might fit inside.

I pushed myself through. How? Like anyone else, first one wing and then the other. Immediately I began to fall. I only knew which way was up because it was the direction I wasn’t going. Then I found my wings and began to flap.

I saw bupkes. Nothing. Nada. I flew in little circles, not knowing where the walls were, not knowing how far was down. I heard the gurgling of water. The Fountain or the shpritzing of a kvetchy sea serpent? I could not tell.