The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon

it was neatly filed, except where a tiny slit encrusted with blood had caught the thread. Wasn’t it likely then that the thread had been placed there by a thresher desiring to implicate Simon?

Without considering the consequences, I lifted the hand I’d been holding to my lips, to receive Uncle’s touch and blessing one last time. When I pulled him to me, I began kissing his cheeks and lips.

I was covered with blood. Dyed with it. Like an illumination come to life.

When I closed my eyes, a cold wind of presentiment swept me to my feet. Sweat beaded on my forehead. The hairs over all my body seemed to stand on end. A scream building in my chest pushed open an inner door, and a vision entered:

Around me was a scorched landscape of stoney hills. It was hot, dry. Sunset was casting jagged shadows across canyons and slopes, giving the scene the stark clarity of Torah. In the distance, from the eastern horizon, a white light was rising and approaching. It twinkled as it continued to ascend in the sky, as if expressing code, and it seemed to me that it was surely journeying to deliver a message. As I stood in a position of prayer, there now rose around me a great swooshing sound. It was as if an invisible creature—or the air itself—were breathing. The white light suddenly showed wings and took on the form of a great, luminescent ibis. It was as if the pigment of its white plumage had been distilled from the moon itself. With its black feet braced in front of its body, this bird swooped down and landed just in front of me, ran for several feet to get its balance, drew its wings closed, then poked its scythe-like beak in its chest to ruffle its feathers. It was the size of a man. Standing regally before me, its great silver eyes seemed to contain liquid mercury, to possess the spiritual allure of Moses. With its beak opening and closing, it spoke in my Uncle’s voice. “Turn around!” As I obeyed, I found that I was at the edge of a body of water, perhaps a mile across, and that the curious breathing sound which had risen up around me was simply the noise of waves crashing and falling away. On the far shore, tens of thousands of men had formed columns like ants, were running up the slopes of faraway hills. “Turn back for me,” the ibis said. I obeyed again. “As you suspected, you have come late for the Exodus this year, and you have been left behind. If you are to get across now, you will have to fly; you have no time to wait for Moses to return.” When I replied, “But I have no wings,” the ibis said, “A kabbalist does not need wings to fly, only the will to do so.” His pronunciation of the word “will”— vontade—was purposely ambiguous and was also intended to imply bondade, “goodness.” The ibis then said, “Now face south.” As I did, the landscape froze in time. The scent of vellum was all around me, and I saw that the sea and hills and even the ibis itself had been but figures painted on a page of an illuminated Haggadah. I was standing on a panel depicting the Exodus, on the Egyptian shore. I had been left behind with Pharaoh.

Shouts from the street woke me into the present. Of course, I thought, the premonition I’d had while watching the flagellants two days earlier had been a precursor to this vision. God had been trying to gain entrance to me and show me this since Friday. How poorly I listenedwhen it was truly necessary!

The question now was: had I the will and goodness to shepherd my family safely across to the Holy Land?

Suddenly, under an instinct of bodily fear, my hand craved the concise certainty of my knife, grabbed it from my pouch. Judah and Cinfa… Mother, Esther… My hands formed fists about their names. The need to find them swelled me with a clenched force so strong each breath seemed to jump within my lungs.

As I raced up the stairs, I lifted from my pouch the Book of Psalms which Uncle had asked me to deliver; the excess weight was suddenly irritating me out of all proportion to its significance. A thought pressed me back against the wall, however: The note inside for the nobleman which Uncle had written! Might it not end some of my confusion?

This letter was slipped in between the cover and the first page of manuscript. Standing on the cellar stairs, pervaded by a feeling of dread, I ripped the wax seal:

Dear and honored Dom Miguel:

Before you, you see your Book of Psalms and my nephew Berekiah. I ask you now: are they so very different? Both beautiful. Both containing worlds worthy of being remembered.

If you have any doubts, look into my nephew’s eyes. Would you condemn such a good and intelligent gaze to death?

I told you that there are some creatures created in God’s image who have no feet, only pages. Then, I stopped short of asking these following questions so as not to scare you. But desperation is propelling my pen across this page and I cannot hold them back.

Can you be sure that a book does not breathe? Can you be sure that it does not reproduce? If not here in our lowly world of veils, then perhaps in the Upper Realms.

Can you be certain, even, that angels are not books gifted with form by God?

Is not the Torah itself God’s body?

I say one name to you: Metatron.

Repeat this name to yourself. Say it one-hundred and sixty-nine times if you dare.

Will the angel Metatron yet record your good deeds or pass his gaze over your name?

You are a shipwrecked man trapped on an island. I am on a boat throwing a rope to you. It is not the rope you wanted and I am not the savior you had hoped for. Will you lament your fate and moan your disappointment until I pull up anchor and leave you behind? Or will you realize that none of us gets exactly what we want in this life? Will you not make do with what God has given you? After all, a rope from a Jew on a boat crossing the Red Sea at Passover is not something to spit at!

You may even find that you like traveling.

Look at the covenant which has always been with you if you have any doubts. May God bless you whatever your decision.

Abraham Zarco

P.S. I was waiting for you next to tell me that Christian doctors could give my wife, dearest Esther, her virginity back!

A door seemed to open inside me as I finished the letter; Miguel Ribeiro, the renowned Christian nobleman, must have been a secret Jew as well! What else could Uncle have meant by the covenant which has always been with you except the circumcised crown of his sex? Clearly, I thought, Uncle had made a difficult request of Dom Miguel, one that he must have refused. Otherwise, my master would not have made reference to Metatron, the Talmudic angel who records the good deeds of Israel.

As for the request to repeat Metatron’s name one-hundred and sixty-nine times, that was typical of my uncle; it was the number of times the verb zakhar, to remember, appeared in the Old Testament in its various forms. Whenever my master wanted someone of little experience in philosophy to understand a difficult reading of Torah, he gave them a holy phrase related to the verse in question to repeat this many times. Slowly, through kabbalistic channels, comprehension would take shape in the subject’s mind.

That Uncle’s request of Dom Miguel had something to do with books was obvious. Was he soliciting more funds in order to purchase some recently uncovered manuscripts? Had he found a book so special, something so valuable that it provoked greed within the threshing group? Was that the connection between this note and the kabbalah masters?

As I continued up the stairs, I felt for the first time that I was stepping along a path toward the truth. A thresher was involved. Perhaps with someone outside the group. They had murdered Uncle because of a priceless manuscript he had found, something so valuable, so magically empowered that it could turn the golden heart of one of my uncles friends to tin.

At the top of the stairs, I gazed down on my master and the girl. Both lying on the mat. Reaching toward each other like… The thought that they really could have been lovers twisted away from me, and doubt added a terrible depth to the gulf of death separating me from Uncle. Had I truly known him or only glimpsed him through his mask?

A woman’s scream suddenly came from down Temple Street. I whispered goodbye to the bodies below as one would to sleeping children.