The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon

thread my way through the rabble to Goldsmith’s Street and turn up toward Miguel Ribeiro’s mansion. Two armored guards stand outside, halberds poised in gloved hands. The shorter of the two, a sickly looking man with a harelip, follows me with suspicious eyes. I plant myself in front of him and say, “Tell your master that Pedro Zarco wishes to speak with him.”

A black footman with a shaved head is called to carry my message inside. He returns at a trot. The guard opens the gate. On the front steps, a squat servant with oily, copper-colored hair and a sweaty, pimpled forehead rushes to me. He wears blue leggings too tight for his fleshy buttocks, and his green brocade doublet is ripped at the collar. He takes my arm as if escorting me from danger. Up close, I see that his fat neck is scratched raw and red. Is he riddled with mange? He stinks of metal, like an old coin. Perhaps he has been eating antimony pills—a cure-all freely recommended by half-made Christian doctors.

“Inside…inside!” he whispers, his hands waving wildly.

He ushers me into a vaulted waiting room painted with frescoes of roseate gods and goddesses in the Florentine style, then looks me up and down with rapt, jaundiced eyes. In a conspiratorial whisper, he asks, “Is your God really a bull?”

“What?”

“Is the Jewish God a bull?” Forming horns atop his head with his hands, he speaks as if I might not understand Portuguese. “You know, a male cow…a cow’s husband…bull…”

Of course, I’d heard of scholars at the University of Coimbra who believed we had prehensile tails; bishops in Braga who claimed we needed the warm blood of Christian children for Passover rituals; doctors in Porto who said that we possessed an odor similar to that of rotting whale meat—the foetor Judaicus. But this belief that we prayed to a bull was a new slander. An understanding of the misconception involved only came to me weeks later, when I realized that the servant had confused the Portuguese word touro, bull, with Torah. So in reply, I simply sigh and say, “Just let me speak with your master. He knows who I am.”

He wipes his forehead with his sleeve and says in an urgent voice, “Don’t you know where he is? He spoke of needing to find Master Abraham Zarco. He’s you’re uncle, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Then you must know!”

“I assure you I don’t,” I say. “And my uncle can’t possibly be with him—he’s dead.”

“Oh dear.” He holds his head in his hands.

“What is it?” I ask.

He looks up imploringly, whispers, “Dom Miguel has been missing since Sunday. He had mentioned your uncle’s name. I thought…”

“Have you searched for him?”

“Leave?! Leave this house?!” The servant paces the room, curls his hands together, braids and unbraids his arms.

I ask, “When was the last time you saw him?”

“Oh dear…Sunday afternoon. The riot was starting. Some men came looking for Marranos. He spoke with them, then rode out toward Benfica. He has a stables there. But we’ve had no word. I don’t think he made it.”

“Who was with him?”

“No one. I’ve sent messages there. No one’s seen him.” He begins clawing at his neck, then swipes at a chaffed scar below his ear with catlike ferocity. He squats on the ground as if about to relieve his bowels right into the seat of his leggings, continues scratching. “If he were a Jew, I’d understand,” he groans. “But he’s innocent! Completely innocent!”

I remember Uncle’s comment about Dom Miguel’s covenant with the Lord. Apparently, not even his household staff knows that he’s a secret Jew. “Go sing it to the goats, you ignorant peasant!” I say, turning to leave.

The servant jumps up and grabs my arm. I rip it away. His eyes bulge fish-like in anger, and he hisses, “Yes, you’re one of them! Right to the tip of your horns!”

Grinning cruelly, I say, “Have no fear. I won’t curse you to our touro god.”

He arches his back into a posture of command, peers up at me over his pug nose. “Begone, Marrano!” he shouts in an arrogant voice.

But I am beyond the contempt of mortal men. As I turn away, he calls after me in a terrified voice, “You’re not going, are you?!”

I look back for his beseeching eyes. He is squatting again, swiping at his neck, drawing blood now. I watch him from across a distance which, to my surprise, will admit no sympathy for Christian anguish.

The road to Benfica skirts the quarry pits at Campolide where hundreds of yellow-eyed Africans mine limestone from gouged hillocks. Two breeds of slaves they’ve become: the portadores or carriers, backs braced with baskets woven from vine, who grunt and trudge under their burden of stone; and the picadores or hackers, wide-shouldered and lean-muscled, whose rose-pink hands grip the wooden handles of the iron picks which remove the hills a little at a time.

A third breed lives on a lower level: small, darting Portuguese slave boys known as lebres, hares, who scavenge scree and carry it from the worksite in reed baskets.

In Benfica’s main square, a droopy-eyed grandmother wrapped in a black mantilla is hawking quince marmalade from the steps of the Sao Domingos Church.

“Do you know where Miguel Ribeiro has his stables?” I ask her.

“Never heard of him,” she replies.

“The local blacksmith will know,” I say. “Be so kind as to tell me where he works.”

She points down the street to a dusty wooden shack and cackles, “So it’s the Basque you’re after, is it!” Her shoulders hunch and she giggles to herself as if a secret has been exposed.

A sorry-looking donkey is hitched to the shack’s door handle. Flies have formed a buzzing nimbus around an enraged wound on the poor creature’s snout. Inside, a pale-skinned giant with thick black hair and oak-branch arms is pumping a bellows the size of a carriage. He wears only sandals and a long, leather apron, and from the side his thick, muscular legs and even buttocks are visible. The bellows’ cylindrical mouth glows red where it enters the forge. The air smells of smoke and metal and heavy toil. I cough to get his attention, excuse myself and ask, “Dom Miguel Ribeiro—do you know him? He’s said to have a stables very near here.”

He turns to me, and with a clipped Basque accent questions, “Who’s asking?” A thick cord of scar tissue runs from his left ear lobe across his cheek. Droplets of sweat cling to his chin, fall patiently, one by one, to the floor.

“My name is Pedro Zarco,” I say. “I’ve word from Lisbon for him. From his sister.”

He turns away from me and returns to his pumping. In an irritated voice, he says, “If you work for his sister then you should know where he lives.”

“She’s had thick cataracts since childhood and couldn’t describe the way.”

My failure to lie convincingly is implicit in the patient, resigned way he lowers his arms and wipes the sweat from his fingers on his apron. “She doesn’t need to see in order to describe the way to her brother’s stables,” he says.

“Look, she came down from Coimbra after the riot. She’s worried. All she knows is that he’s here somewhere in Benfica. Do you need to see my written pedigree to give me an answer? Or will checking my teeth be enough?”

He laughs from his gut, eyes me up and down. “You’re really quite a nice looking young man.” He thrusts out his legs, leans back and reaches his massive hand below his apron to his sex. As he fondles himself, his leering stare makes it obvious what he wants. “For a little price, I might tell you.”

“For a little price, I could buy the information from someone else.”

“My ‘bird’ is mighty nice,” he grins, showing the remnants of a few brown teeth. “Big as a raven. And the way it can kiss your ass cheeks! Young man, I think you’d like it.”

“I’ve a friend who’d love it. But I’m not interested.”

He unstraps his apron and tosses it aside. He’s completely naked underneath, all dripping, matted hair and