The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon

muscle. His member sticks straight out from his abdomen, big and round as a rolling pin. “I could take you without your permission,” he says, as if favoring me with a forewarning. His eyes are bright with seductive anticipation.

I show Farid’s dagger. “And I could cut it off.”

He laughs, steals forward like a stalking animal, runs his thumb enticingly across the length of his facial scar. “How do you know you won’t like it if you’ve never tried?” he asks.

My heart pounds a code of dread as I back up. “I have tried. Once, with that friend I mentioned. But I prefer other unions. And I’ve grown exceptionally fond of my ass in just one piece if you don’t mind.”

He doesn’t smile, but moves his hand to his lips for saliva. I back to the open doorway. Trying to seduce me with his lust, he begins pumping on his sex.

I chant, “Blessed be He who has given me an escape from satyrs,” and race into the street. Looking over my shoulder, I see him by his donkey, showing the poor animal and a good deal of Benfica his private manhood.

Back in the central square, neither a soap seller nor a basketmaker knows where Miguel Ribeiro keeps his horses. “Don’t you mind that your blacksmith shows himself?” I ask, pointing down the dusty street.

“It’s good for business,” the soapseller observes. “People come from all around to see it. ‘The Basque blacksmith who’s larger than his horses!’”

A gorse peddler joins our conversation and informs me that there are several stables along the road to Sintra, so I head through the town’s western gate. After a long row of sumac bushes, a dirt road opens to the north fronted by a chapel to the Virgin Mary. A mouse of a woman enfolded in black prays on her knees to the benevolent effigy. The Nazarene child, in Mary’s hands, looks fragile and solitary. The supplicant turns to me with a delicate face betokening warmth. “Saint Anthony once prayed here,” she says.

If you added up all the Old Christian claims for their Saint Anthony, you quickly came to the conclusion that he covered more territory on his knees than Dias, da Gama and Columbus in all their ships combined. “Then it is a very holy shrine,” I reply in a gentle voice, crossing myself. “Tell me, senhora, do you know where Dom Miguel Ribeiro might have his stables?”

“I believe it’s just down this road,” she answers, pointing to the north. “On the left after another two hundred yards. First you’ll pass the stream where the Melo boy drowned in the flood a few years back, then that series of granite boulders which Father Vasco says was a temple to witches in the time before He was born. A little ways after that.”

I cross myself again and thank her. The landmarks appear just as she said. A humid, putrid scent begins to waft toward me, however. It grows sickening just as I cross the gnarled shadow of a giant oak on which is carved the hollow-eyed skull usually painted above the doors of leper houses. A hare, quick as fear, suddenly darts across my feet. All my senses attuned to the present, I step over a cartwheel abandoned in the middle of the road. On the west side of the road, a grove of orange trees gives way to grasses, and I spot the stables—six arcades flanking a white and blue farmhouse. A low stone wall borders the property. The wooden gate which gives entry is unlocked, squeals open to my touch. Halfway up the dirt path, I call, “Dom Miguel! I am Master Abraham’s nephew. I mean no harm!”

My voice seems to cut dangerously at the rotting air. Only the dull, staccato rapping of a woodpecker from a long ways off dares enter the ensuing silence. I cross the dry field fronting the stables fighting the urge to retch, breathe as lightly as I can. All but one of the sheds is empty. In it is the source of the maleficent odor; an eyeless horse being eaten away by waves of squirming maggots.

The front door of the house is locked. A muffled voice comes to me just as I touch the knocker. My hand peels open my pouch, creeps around the base of Farid’s dagger. The door opens, and a gaunt, beak-nosed man in a rough linen cloak steps out. He points a crossbow at my heart. “Old or New Christian?!” he demands.

“Old,” I answer.

Two more men emerge from the house. Arms grip me from behind, tear open the ache in my shoulder. “Filho da puta! Son of a whore!” a voice spits in my ear.

Using the Hebrew for whore, I say, “If my mother were a zona, I’d be dressed a lot better than I am!”

“What was that?” The gaunt figure lowers his crossbow, steps to me.

The blue and white fringes of his prayer shawl dangle below his cloak. “Your tzitzit are showing,” I say. “You’re not going to fool many people that way.”

“I’m not aiming to fool anyone,” he says. “Jacob, let him go.”

Set free, we bless each other and exchange names. “I’m looking for Dom Miguel Ribeiro,” I explain. “Is this his stables?”

“Yes,” he answers, unfurling his arm toward the door.

Inside, a man only slightly older than me, with spiky black hair and several days’ growth of beard shadowing his cheeks, sits on the floor at the back of the foyer. He wears a blue brocade doublet that is open at the collar, leather riding pants torn at his thigh, the coarsest of Alentejo boots. The heel of one is missing. Offering me a nod of acknowledgment, he stands and walks toward me, limping a bit because of the missing heel.

“Dom Miguel Ribeiro?” I ask.

He nods. I begin to introduce myself, but the beak-nosed guard with the crossbow now standing at my side exclaims, “He’s Abraham Zarco’s nephew!”

Dom Miguel’s eyes open wide and he takes my hands. His touch is frigid. “Come!” he says, his voice quivering with eagerness. He leads me to a warm kitchen smelling of grilled meat, and we sit alone at a granite table by a hearth of snapping embers. “Where’s your uncle?” he questions.

When I tell him, he turns toward the wall and crosses himself.

“Why did he visit you recently?” I ask.

Dom Miguel continues to face away, however. So I say, “Maybe it’s my lack of sleep, but I’m confused. Do you know that you’re Jewish? Or, at least, that my uncle considered you so. Did that have something to do with his recent visit?”

The nobleman jumps up suddenly and takes down a wine skin from a shelf above the mantle. He pours the burgundy liquid into two ceramic cups and dilutes them both with water. He hands me mine and says, “To your health,” then downs most of his in a single gulp. He drops heavily to his chair. “Drink!” he prompts with a twist to his hand, then quoting a famous Hebrew poem, adds, “‘Drink all day long, until the day wanes and the sun coats its silver with gold.’” As I take a sip, he observes, “Wine is the only thing keeping me going. By now, it’s replaced all my blood.” To my questioning eyes, he adds, “No, I don’t think I’m Jewish…not yet, but I’m learning. And that was indeed part of the reason for your uncle’s visit.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Me neither,” he laughs in a single, ironic exhale. “We’d have to ask your uncle again to be sure. And now, that’s impossible. But according to what he told me, I was born in Ciudad Real to Jewish parents. In the year fourteen eighty-two.” He snaps his fingers, “Gained two years just like that. A miracle of sorts. Your uncle said that in fourteen eighty-four my parents were burnt at the second auto-da-fe ever held in Ciudad Real.” He downs the last drops of his wine, scratches the whiskers on his chin. “Considered negativos, they were, since they refused to confess the names of other secret Jews. Your uncle, he said that he handled all the arrangements to have me smuggled into Portugal. He studied for a time with my father apparently, knew my parents well. He said that my mother forced him to pledge that I be raised a true Christian, that I not be told of my origins unless at some future date it were to become absolutely essential. Your uncle said that his attitude toward me at the time was, ‘As long as you’re going to be one of them, you might as well get the most out of it.’ So he waited until he found childless aristocrats who wanted a little boy to inherit their holdings and who wouldn’t ask too many questions about the baby’s circumcised sex. I only found this all out a week ago when your uncle came to my house to inform me that the Book of Psalms your aunt was scripting for me was almost finished.” Miguel pours us both more wine. “He gave me a letter signed by my adoptive father as proof.”

“Why do you think my uncle told you now, after so many years?” I ask.

“Don’t know.” He leans toward me and stares into my eyes as if trying to elicit a reassuring response. I shrug my inability to provide it. He belches loudly, looks away. “Berekiah, I’ve thought about this a lot,” he says without turning back. “Do you suppose that he knew the Old Christians would begin to kill the Jews of Lisbon…that he was worried for my safety?”

“He had powers, but I…” A shiver snaking its way up my spine binds my words to silence.