The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon

western wall where the knife had been cleaned. Lifting its fringe over his head, he showed me five slashing strokes of blood coming to a sudden end at a clean edge of tile. It was as if a hand with fingertips but no palm had been wiped there.

Was the killer a being able to disappear by fingerpainting arcane symbols in blood? Had one of the threshers summoned a demon or ghost to slay my master? Could such a creature from the Other Side have gotten past the mezuzah on our doorframe?

“What do you make of it?” Farid asked with anxious gestures. When I shook my head, he dropped the hanging back into place and signalled, “Now give me the rosary bead and the thread.”

I took them from my pouch and handed them over.

He sniffed and licked at them. “The bead is carob wood, well polished. Expensive. Made locally, I’d say. But it does not belong to Father Carlos. At least, its not from the rosary of his with which I’m familiar. The thread, as you know, is silk. Very fine quality. I would have to see Simon’s gloves to know if it’s a match. And even then… There must be more miles of black silk in Lisbon than paved streets.” He let his hands fall to his sides.

“Nothing more?” I asked.

“Just that you were right about your uncle being murdered while still wearing his clothes. Inside his robe, there are stains from excrement and from semente branca.”

It was as if my masters body had released all its fluids. Perhaps, at the moment of a violent death, the body seeks to cleanse itself so the soul can depart quickly to God.

“Is that it?” I asked. When he nodded, I signalled, “Then how do you think he escaped? I know for certain the door was bolted firmly from the inside. He’d have had to pass through the cellar walls. There was no way…”

“Only one very poor thought has sought to dispel my ignorance,” he gestured.

“Which is?”

Farid pointed up to the window eyelets. There were three, oval in shape, and each no longer than ten inches and no wider than a man’s hand. They were covered by tiny shutters which could be locked and highly polished hide flaps which allowed only a dim light to enter the room.

I signalled, “Not even a child or dwarf could slip through one of those. Unless the killer was a mink or viper…”

“I told you it was a pauper of an idea.” Farid shrugged, held his thumb and forefinger to his lips, then swirled them upward in a graceful arc. He meant that we had to wait for Allah to give us an answer.

“Can’t wait for Him,” I replied. Walking to the stairs, I sat to consider the mystery. I thought: How strange that I feel nothing but a vague emptiness and weakness of body. It was as if my love had died with Uncle. As if—cut loose from my past and present—I were floating free of everything but an unstoppable need to find the killer.

Suddenly, my heart seemed to leap against my chest; someone was scratching at one of the shutters over the eyelets we were just discussing. I ran up the cellar stairs, dashed through the kitchen to the courtyard. And found Roseta smacking her paw against a ball of vermilion wool which Uncle had recently made for her. She was all wet, looked like she’d been tossed in a well.

“You soulless idiot!” I hissed at her.

I took a long deep breath, apologized to her and walked out our gate to the street. To the east, about a hundred paces down the Rua de Sao Pedro, Dr. Montesinhos’ body was still hanging in the doorway to our old schoolhouse. A small man in a long violet cape stood before him, was raising his right hand to offer a blessing. I could see him only in profile, but he had my master’s wild gray hair and cinnamon complexion.

It’s Uncle! I suddenly thought, as if all my previous conclusions about his death had been sheer idiocy. Of course, he’s used magic to fool us all!

It was insanity, I know, but relief swept through me, and I started to advance toward him. I may even have begun laughing. On hearing my approaching footsteps, however, the small dark man turned toward me, froze, then bolted around the corner toward the back of the Church of Sao Miguel. By the time I reached there, he was gone from sight.

Desperately confused, I trudged back to Dr. Montesinhos’ body. The gold sovereign which had been placed in his mouth to pay for his heavenly ferry across the Jordan River was missing. With a jolt like that which comes after jumping from a high wall, I thought: The man in the  violet cape was not my uncle, had reached up not to bless the body but to steal the coin. He had been just a common thief.

On walking back home, I was pervaded by the sensation that history had taken off on an errant path unforeseen by God Himself. All of us in Lisbon—Jew and Christian alike—were now dependent only on ourselves for survival. It was then that a chilling thought came to me which I never imagined would ever penetrate my mind: There never was anyGod watching over us!Even at its kabbalisticcore,the Torahis simplyfiction. There is no covenant. I have dedicated my whole life to a lie.

On descending into the cellar, I sat again on the bottom step of the stairs and hid my head in my hands. Farid came to my side, rested his hand atop my head. “We’re all doubting God right now,” he signalled. “Do not think about the greater troubles which we all have. We have a murder before us. Let us return to that. Now, what special value might your uncle’s missing Haggadah have had to the killer?”

I reminded Farid that my master had always modeled the faces of his Biblical characters on famous Lisboners, neighbors and friends—including his beloved colleagues in the threshing group. Always, he attempted to match them to characters possessing their own predilections and interests, of course.

“Had any of the threshers just been illuminated as an evil man?” Farid gestured.

“No,” I signalled back. “I don’t think he suspected any of them. Or had only learned very recently of the treachery against him. Probably, he wouldn’t have gone back and re-illuminated their panels. It would have been simply too much labor for results…” I stopped in mid-sentence; everything was falling into place. Last Friday, just before our Passover seder, Uncle had told me that he’d found the face of Haman for his latest manuscript. In his voice, sadness and relief had woven together. Now, to Farid, I gestured that he must have discovered the perpetrators of some sort of plot against him that very day. I signalled, “And I think that he used the face of his principal enemy for the villain Haman…the face of the man who would kill him. It’s the only possibility. And that’s why his last Haggadah was stolen. The murderer knew of his characterization. Or suspected it. Or even accidentally came across it as he paged greedily through the manuscripts in the genizah. He panicked, took it with him. That’s why he didn’t leave blood stains on the bottom manuscripts or take our coins.”

Farid tugged on his ear lobe, looked down at me gravely over his broad nose. “We must consider each of the threshers in turn,” he signalled. “Father Carlos, what could have been his motivation? Could he have been Haman?”

“Uncle and he had argued about a safira of Solomon Ibn Gabirol’s which Carlos had refused to give up.”

“And Samson Tijolo? Had Uncle spoken of him lately?”

“Just before I went to his house to buy wine, Uncle told me that he wished to talk to him, gave me a note for him.”

“What was the subject he wanted to discuss?”

“Don’t know,” I gestured. “But there’s another thing. They only ever saw each other for threshing meetings. Was it simply the distance between our houses? I wondered about that sometimes.”

“A spark of dislike?”

“More like rivalry. Two intelligent, powerful kabbalists. Competition may exist even amongst the angels.”

“And then there’s Diego,” Farid gestured.

Diego had not yet completed his initiation into the threshing group. I replied, “I don’t know if he’d been informed yet of the secret genizah.”

“You could find that out from one of the other threshers.”

I took out the note fallen from Diego’s turban, showed it to Farid and explained how it had come into my possession. “What do you make of it?” I asked.

“Madre is mother, of course, particularly when used to discuss Our Lady. So I would say that it seems to be a half-Jewish, half-Christian talisman—a prayer to the Virgin for something good to happen to an Isaac on the twenty-ninth.” He handed it back. “Very strange things you Anusim are making of late.