The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon

So will I now begin to imitate my master’s words? Is that how I will keep him with me?

Antonio observes, “I think you would find a trip to Pope Julius II most liberating. The Moslems throughout the Italian peninsula are friendly, they say.”

Moslems in Italy? I figure the drought has parched his sense of geography. “Listen closely, my friend, were you here Sunday, the first day of the riot?” I question again.

“Nearby…hidden,” he replies. He raises a finger to his lips. “With a four-legged friend.”

“Could you see the gate to our courtyard?”

“Yes,” he replies. “From the cobbles to the sky, it’s all part of the…”

“And did you see anyone enter? Maybe with a knife…or a rosary. Manuel Monchique perhaps? You remember him, one of my uncle’s old students.”

“There may have been a dragon-fly or two,” he says. “And some toads. It’s not always easy to spot them when they hop inside the…”

“But a man?” When he shakes his head, I say, “You’re sure? How about Diego Goncalves? You know him, he’s a printer…a friend of my uncle’s.”

“No.”

“What about Father Carlos? Or Rabbi Losa?”

He shakes his head after I pronounce each name. It seems that the killer must have entered and exited through our fruit store—or through my mother’s separate entrance to Temple Street. “Then peace be with you,” I tell him, and bow my departure.

As I start away, he screeches, “Have you no lamb from Passover? There’s a hole in my stomach bigger than the one in my soul!”

“Go to see Cinfa,” I call back. “She’ll give you all the fruit you want.”

“Bless you, my boy.”

Ahead, mendicants are clamoring by the cathedral wall; despite threats of death made by the Crown, one of the cows let loose by the King has been slaughtered. A wiry man is slicing its skin away with a rusty sword while a juggler drenched in sweat entrances a group of waifs and dogs by whirling three of its bloody hooves in the air.

Around the corner, Manuel Monchique’s house remains silent to my knocks. The shutter of a window suddenly opens just a whisper. “It’s Pedro Zarco,” I call, using my Christian first name for safety. When no one answers, I slip around the side. Tossing my hammer over the wall to their courtyard, I pry my body up and over. Manuel’s elfin mother stands at the back doorway, robed in black, gripping a blue ceramic pitcher in gnarled hands. She has the expectant look of a frightened animal, a tanned face puckered by age. “It’s me, Pedro,” I say. “I went to school with Manuel for a time. My uncle is Master Abraham.” When I pick up my hammer, she tosses her pitcher at me. It breaks into in two perfect pieces by my feet. She rushes inside.

Manuel comes to the doorway draped in a black-fringed scarlet cloak. The blade of a sword held straight up in both his hands splits my vision of his ruddy, youthful face. He seems just another of the great wonders of this era of falsehood with which we’ve been burdened; one would never guess that he’d been the kind of oversensitive boy whose eyes watered at the slightest trace of wind, forever doubled over from the meagerest chase through the woods after his beloved butterflies. Now, he puffs up his chest like a pheasant, designs a letter yod in the air with the tip of his sword and says in a false voice of command, “I don’t know what debt you think you’ve come to collect, but you won’t get anything from me or my family!”

“You can go sing it to the goats, too,” I say. “Save all your Christian bravado for the virgins you seduce on Yom Kippur. I come only with this.” Lifting the scrolled drawing from my pouch, I toss it to him. “Take a look, my brave and handsome crusader for Christ.”

Manuel kneels, picks up my sketch with a wary hand. Immediately, his eyes light with surprise. As if I’ve handed him stolen property, he asks, “Where’d you get this?!”

“I drew it.”

“You’ve seen her?” He sheaths his sword, rushes to me. Reaching for my hands as a friend again, he asks, “Where? When? Is she all right?”

“Manuel, I’m sorry…she’s dead. Murdered at our house.”

When I explain, his touch grows cold. Disbelief echoes inside his quivering breathing. Either he has a talent for lying or this is the first he has heard of her death. “It couldn’t have been her,” he says. “Even your hand might confuse an eye, the curve of a chin, a…”

“Is she a laundress or a baker?” I question.

“Neither,” he smiles. “It’s the wrong…”

When I take her ring of braided gold filaments from my pouch, he grabs it from me. The certainty in his voice falters. “It’s the right kind. But really, it doesn’t prove anything. I know other women who have rings just like it.”

“Her hands smelled of olive oil, rosemary and lemon oil. She had ash stains. And two indentations on her temples. Like the marks made…”

The blood descends from Manuel’s face. He kneels to keep from fainting. As if giving way to sleep, he closes his eyes and begins to weep. When he has his breath, he says, “Candles… She works with Master Bento. They make scented candles together. With floral essences. When the wax has cooled, they’re coated with olive oil to keep them fresh.”

“And the indentations?”

Manuel nods. “At birth. The midwife had to pry her out. With a forceps. She wouldn’t come. Afraid to take first steps, she was. So very timid, as if the world were a steep, descending staircase into a dungeon. I was helping her see that there was a garden below. I was helping her walk to it. We were…we…”

As I wait for his tears to end, I consider the impossibility of a shy girl found naked with my uncle after making love.

Manuel suddenly says in a limp voice, “How was she killed? Was she violated by the Christians?”

“I don’t know if she was raped. I don’t think so. But, Manuel, her throat was cut.”

“Dear God…” His buries his head in his hands for a time. When he looks up, he says, “I…I suppose you’ve already buried her.”

“We couldn’t wait any longer. I’m sorry. At the Almond Farm. I will show you the exact spot when I can. And we will say a kaddish together for her. But do you have any idea what was she doing in my neighborhood?”

“She left the house on Sunday to visit Tomas, her brother. He lives near you. She must have run from the mob and found her way to your place by accident.”

“Did she know my uncle?” I ask.

“She knew of him, of course. But they never met that I know of.”

“How about any of the members of Uncle’s threshing group… Diego, Father Carlos?”

“I don’t think she’d even heard of them.”

“And did she consider herself a Jew?”

He shakes his head. “Not really. Mosaic law about the mother having to be Jewish and all that. Her mother’s Old Christian, was born in Segovia, but has lived in Lisbon since she was little. A peasant really. But don’t try to tell her that. Teresa’s father is a Portuguese New Christian from Chaves. When she decided to marry me, they refused to have anything to do with her. So what do I do? I get a card of pure blood. Logical, no? Does the old whore care? She tells me that a Jew is like a pomegranate because the blood inside always stains what it touches. She has an answer for everything. Like the Devil.” Manuel stands, twists his face away in anguish. “And your uncle, he never understood the pressure I was under.”

“Manuel, Master Abraham is dead, too.”

He starts, leans toward me. His eyes show panic.

I nod to assure him it’s the truth. “Aunt Esther was violated and will not speak. Judah is still missing. And Uncle is with us no longer. Mother, Cinfa and Reza are safe.”

Manuel turns around to hide his tears. Or is it his prior knowledge?

“Master Abraham never did forgive me then,” comes his whisper.

I ask, “Was his forgiveness that important?”

Manuel whips around and glares at me as if it is criminal to pose such a question. “Berekiah, a card from the