The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon

Time is like a seal certifying existence. And like a seal, it is artificial. As Uncle used to say, past, present and future are really just verses of the same poem. Our goal is to trace its rhyme scheme back to God.

And yet it was already Monday afternoon, a day since Uncle’s death.

The fourth evening of Passover would be descending soon.

My mother had just left the cellar, had told me that she’d never seen the girl before. “You’re sure?” I’d asked her.

“Never,” she’d whispered shamefully, and I could see her thinking: It was carnal sin which drew death to him.

I was now standing above the bodies, my aunt by my side. She wasn’t howling or crying, had simply picked up a shard of pottery and was scarring her fingers with its razor edge.

“Esther, stop that!” I said. “Esther…”

Her transfixed stare, remote and childlike, showed she had severed herself from the finality of Uncle’s death seeking to penetrate our hearts. A groan rising from her belly splintered suddenly into gagging. She looked between him and the girl, leaned forward as if tugged downward by his grip, began slashing at her index finger—the finger graced with her wedding band. I ran to her, ripped the ceramic piece away. Blood sluiced burning over my hands.

Farid rushed from the stairs and folded his arm protectively around Esther’s waist. As he steered her away, she turned, stared at me over her shoulder as if to say goodbye before a long voyage. With Farid following closely behind her, she carried herself up the stairs with a ghostly grace.

Although its exact route is hidden to us, the pathway between sadness and insight must be paved carefully by God; I suddenly realized that the killer, who had been intimately familiar with the contents of our storage cabinet, would also probably have known of our genizah!

Taking a key from inside the eel bladder hanging behind the Bleeding Mirror, I lifted the rim of our prayer mat skirting the north wall and peeled away a piece of slate to reveal a lock. Half a circle to the right I turned. At the sound of a click, I lifted a wooden lid flanking the wall, three feet by four, camouflaged with slate. Our genizah opened with a groan of protest.

I’d been right; smudges of blood stained the top two manuscripts: the “Fox Fables” which I was illustrating and the Book of Esther which my aunt was lettering. Below, for the most part clean, but still tainted here and there with the red finger-shadows of the killer, were family Torahs, Haggadahs and prayer books; a map of the Mediterranean by Judah Abenzara; religious commentaries by Uncle’s friend Abraham Sabah; poetic works by Farid ud-din Attar; and two mystical guidebooks by Abraham Abulafia—our spiritual father—which my master had not yet summoned the courage to entrust to his secret smugglers. Below these, seemingly untouched, there rested a Torah illuminated with magical beasts bequeathed to my master by his late friend, Isaac Bracarense; a Koran from Persia; three piles of my master’s personal correspondence; our woolen sack of coinage, still heavy with copper and silver; and finally, the marriage contract between my aunt and uncle, scripted by one and illustrated by the other.

I locked everything below the genizah door.

It seemed clear to me that the killer had stopped his search before reaching the lower manuscripts; they were unstained. And if he had continued that far, surely he would have taken our money.

The only work missing opened the petals of a new mystery: it was the Haggadah Uncle had been completing just before his death. For all the daring of its knotted patterns and bird-headed letters, it was worth nothing in comparison to the Abulafia manuscripts, portions of which were centuries old and in the master’s own hand.

So my uncle’s Haggadah must have possessed a hidden value to the killer.

That certainty gifted me with another, and I turned around so that I could face our desks: the killer had found the key to the genizah in the eel bladder hidden behind the Bleeding Mirror. This was confirmation that a member of the threshing group was involved. But why had the genizah been re-locked? Out of a simple desire for order?

Seeking a power to enhance my own, I took out Uncle’s ibis ring from my pouch and slipped it on my right index finger.

Farid had returned to the cellar now, was standing between the bodies, staring at the lips of crusted blood peeling away from my uncle’s neck. He began wavering as if foundationless. When he looked at me, something he saw… His eyes rolled back in his head to show a sickly white. His body melted. I jumped up and reached out to break his fall. I held him till he awoke.

Cinfa stood on the landing now. The girl’s eyes, like Torah pointers, were fixed on Uncle. Her hands gripped the hair at the back of her neck. Liquid was dripping down the legs of her pants.

Afraid that she wouldn’t be able to cope with death viewed from any closer, I shouted, “Go up the stairs and guard the door! Let no one down!”

She did as I said. Farid was waking now, and I began to blot his brow with my sleeve. He sat up. “I’m okay,” he signalled. “It was suddenly too much to bear. And something I saw…”

“What?”

“On your uncle’s right thigh…” Farid clasped his hands together and took a deep breath.

“What?!” I demanded.

“Semente branca.” Farid used the kabbalist’s term, white seed, for semen.

“What are you talking about?”

“Come,” he signalled. We crouched together. There, on Uncle’s inner thigh, in between smearings of blood, were patches of crust, like bits of mica.

“That could be anything!” I gestured wildly. “Spilled honey, almond milk. Uncle didn’t pay attention to…”

“It’s semente branca,” Farid repeated with an impatient, downward thrust to his gestures. “I sniffed it and…” Before I could stop him, he peeled a tiny piece free and placed it on his tongue. He tasted it as one might sample a new spice. Gagging suddenly, he spit it back into his hand, wiped it on his pants. “They had just made love,” he signalled with definitive gestures.

It wasn’t shock that Uncle could couple with someone other than Aunt Esther that made me gasp. But that he had brought a lover to his prayer cellar, our synagogue… It was impossible. It changed everything. And yet…

“Listen, I need your help,” I gestured to Farid, realizing that we had reached the appointed time when I needed to count on his singular talents. I pulled the prayer rug off the girl and told him what I already knew and suspected, showed him the note Uncle had written to Dom Miguel Ribeiro, the nobleman for whom Aunt Esther had scripted a Book of Psalms. When he finished reading, I grasped his powerful hands and placed them flat against my chest so he could feel my heartbeat. I signalled, “Farid, I’ve been thinking that God may have brought us together for just this Passover. Perhaps he needs us to find Uncle’s killer together. I must go look for Judah soon. But for now, I want you to walk around this room, gift your gaze to every form and shadow and tell me if you spot anything I haven’t. Anything! You must give me your interpretation of what happened.”

Farid did as I said. And when he was ready to tell me what he’d found, he motioned me to follow him to Uncle. We crouched by his head. When will we be able to bury him? I suddenly wondered, recalling with a jolt that we had to see him safely into sanctified ground as soon as possible.

“There is a slight slope to the slit across his throat,” Farid signalled. “I’d say that the killer twisted your uncle’s head to the left from behind, and with a razor-sharp knife in his right hand…” Farid tugged his arm across his chest to indicate the motion that must have ended my master’s life.

He stood up, walked over to the girl, crouched by her hands, leaned over and sniffed at them eagerly, puffing like a dog. Looking up at me, he signalled, “She worked with olive oil and rosemary. Something else that’s almost disappeared, possibly lemon oil.” He touched her thumb with the tip of his index finger. “There’s some ash there. I’d guess she was a baker. The ash may come from the ovens.”

I nodded my agreement; I would be a greater fool than I am to discount Farid’s nose or eyes.

“And look at her right temple,” he gestured. “There’s a small circular indentation there. One on the left as well.”

“What do you think they are?”

“I’ve no idea. But the symmetry is most unusual. Now follow me.” He led me to the leather hanging on the