The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon

You’re like sphinxes with Jewish hearts and Christian heads.”

“There’s another thing, Farid. Diego was injured at the time. After being stoned and chased, could he have mustered the strength to slit two throats?”

“If he felt he’d had to; Diego is a survivor, fled Castile with the Inquisitors salivating over his imminent capture. His injury would be the best of excuses should anyone begin to suspect him.”

“But he lives blocks away. Would he have risked setting sail through a sea of Old Christians to reach us? Unlikely.”

“If, however, he had combined skills with Eurico Damas…”

“Or with Rabbi Losa,” I noted. “He always hated Uncle. And he deals in religious garments, undoubtedly rosaries as well.”

Farid breathed deeply. “And lastly there’s Dom Miguel Ribeiro,” he gestured.

“I think he’d gone to Dom Miguel for funds to purchase a very valuable manuscript. A book that may have provoked an argument in the threshing group. This time, Uncle’s need to save every last page of Hebrew from destruction may have gotten him killed.”

“The girls husband,” Farid signalled. “What about him?” He caught my hands to stifle my protest. “I realize that it’s almost impossible that she and Uncle had been lovers,” he gestured. “But not everyone is blessed with your faith. Perhaps her husband had been convinced she was giving him the sharp horns of a cuckold. She might have come to Uncle for help of some sort, to ask a religious question. The husband could have tracked her under the mistaken assumption that whomever she was meeting was a secret lover. After watching her disappear through the trap door, he burst in and leapt upon Uncle. He took his own wife’s clothing so she couldn’t be traced to him.”

“An obsessively jealous husband, mistrustful, faithless, prone to rage.”

“Lisbon is up to its towers in such vermin. How many men do we both know who do not understand the way of love?”

“But he would have had to realize that his wife’s very face would give him away. Taking the clothes would be an absurd gesture.”

“Unless they possessed a hidden value,” Farid signalled. “A jewel or a letter of credit. Beri, there’s one more possibility.” Farid licked his lips nervously.

“Who?”

“Like amateur beekeepers around an angry hive, we are avoiding the topic of Esther.” He waved away my protests. “No one we know is more prone to rage than her, right or wrong?” he demanded.

I nodded.

“Her silence is most strange. Perhaps upon discovering the girl with your uncle in the cellar…”

“It’s ludicrous!” I interrupted. “Do you think she could have strangled them in a jealous rage with some rosary she just happened to find lying about the courtyard?! Then slit their throats, stolen our lapis lazuli and gold and raced out of here so she could get raped on the street? Farid, it’s a house of cards built on a slanted table! No, her silence is not strange. I understand it perfectly. It has been born of forever disbelief, not of guilt.”

“A house of cards on a slanted table during a sandstorm,” Farid replied with an apologetic grace to his hand movements. “But I had to let the thought into the air, so it could fly freely from us. Now tell me this, Beri… Why would a thresher collaborate with Eurico Damas or anyone else outside the group?”

Blackmail? The word swept into my mind so violently that I jumped to my feet.

“What is it?” Farid gestured. “What have you heard? Who’s coming?!”

“Its not what I’ve heard.” I signalled for him to wait a moment so I could think. Could Eurico Damas have blackmailed one of the threshing members to help him slay Uncle and rob our storage cabinet and genizah? Perhaps he imagined that we kept barrels of gold, coffers filled with rubies. Could he have even brought the girl to the house, killed her there to make us think that she and Uncle had been lovers—to convince us that her husband had done the evil deed?

Another terrible thought occurred to me: perhaps the killer had spilled his own seed on Uncle! It was unspeakably dreadful. But even if we had been gifted with no other knowledge these past two days, we had learned that such evil was always only a single spark away from the present tense.

“Blackmail,” I told Farid. “During our accursed reign of masks, everyone has a secret or two for which he can be made to pay!”

He stood and took my shoulder. “But that, too, presents us with a quandary. For if all of us have secrets to hide, could not anyone have been coerced? How do we proceed if we see everyone wearing the veil of suspicion?”

It was then that the most unimaginable terror spilled into my gut. Sweat beaded on my forehead. I felt sick, moaned aloud. So disturbed I was that I spoke to Farid rather than use our signs. “Father Carlos was with Judah! Might not the boy have witnessed the murders? Carlos couldn’t bring himself to end his life. He took him away!”

Farid read my lips, closed his eyes as if to shut out the possibility. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he signalled weakly. His hands twirled together in a dance of prayer.

I took his shoulder, signalled, “Did you see if Carlos was covered with blood?!”

“They were far away. I don’t think so, but I can’t be sure.”

A grave silence held its fingers to our lips. We were left with Eurico Damas, Rabbi Losa and Dom Miguel Ribeiro. One or more of them had joined forces with a threshing group member.

“We will need to speak to all of them,” Farid said.

As I nodded, my mind began to construct an explanation for the clues we’d found:

Uncle had been in the house all alone, was visited by a girl whom he had known years ago‚a baker’s assistant‚ the daughter of an old friend perhaps. She was greatly troubled. Her husband had beaten her recently. What should she do? My master sat her at the kitchen table and poured her a cup of wine moderated with water, offered her a matzah. They talked of her desperation until shouts from the street drew their attention. Understanding immediately what was happening‚ Uncle told her to remain quiet‚ crept cat-like to the courtyard and then the store to look for our family members. But I was on the way back from my journey to buy kosher wine and Esther was at the market in front of St.Steven’s. Judah was with Father Carlos. Mother and Cinfa were taking siesta with a neighbor.As Old Christians battered at the doors to the store‚ he took the girl into the cellar‚ slipped the tattered Persianrugin place over the trap door from below. Curtains were drawn over the window eyeletsat the top of the northern wall so no one could see in. The tiny shutters were locked.

Sometime later‚ during a brief quiet spell in the riot, there was a knock on the cellar door. A familiar voice calling for help. Rushing up the stairs‚ Uncle opened the threshold to our synagogue to a brother from the threshing group. This manhad argued with Uncle about a valuable manuscript‚ mayeven have plotted to purchase it behind my master’s back. Whatever the particular nature of his sin‚ he had earned the face of Haman. And yet, with a riot raging outside, all bitterness would have been forgotten for the moment.

Eurico Damas suddenly strode in behind the thresher. He lunged without warning, pushed Uncle down the stairs. Hence the deep bruise on his shoulder. As my master rose to one knee, he was grabbed from behind. A rosary was wrapped around his neck. “Give up easily, and I swear on the Torah that I’llspare the girl!” Damas shouted.

Uncle acceded, understanding in that moment the nature of the sacrifice he had been called upon to make. Life was squeezed from him. The thresher, a former shohet, took my master’s body, slithis throat to make sure he would not revive. He was laid gently to the ground. Blood sluiced freely across the prayer mat.

A black thread was placed around his thumbnail to implicate Simon.

By now, the girl had backed to the eastern wall of the cellar, was crouching in fear, begging for her life. Damas broke his promise to Uncle, grabbed her, but as he was strangling her, the rosary broke. He slit her throat, then threw her down. Her head smashed against a flower pot. Her nose broke, was twisted grotesquely out of shape. Within seconds, she had bled to death.

The rosary beads were scattered across the slate floor of the cellar. Damas ordered the thresher to pick them up. One was left behind, lost under our desks.

The thresher then took the key to the genizah from our eel bladder, opened the camouflaged lid. Uncle’s last Haggadah was discovered on top, paged through greedily until the killer came upon his own face as Haman.