The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon

The evil beings words rip speech from me. I stare into Gemila’s dark eyes to make contact with him. Her head swirls in a lazy circle as if plagued by irresistible sleep. When she straightens up, she laughs from her gut.

“So you’ve seen the murderer?!” I demand.

“I have! But if you raise Moses’ finger against me again, I will cling as tight to the secret as I do to this woman.”

“And you will tell me the identity of the murderer if I leave you be?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“Why should I trust you?”

“Maimon does not lie,” he says. “I have even dared to tell your Lord the truth. I do not fear him. I have nothing to lose. Only Jews like this sinning whore have a need to lie before their Lord!”

Senhora Faiam takes my arm, “Would you listen to an ibbur, Berekiah?”

“But he knows!” I shout. “He knows who did it!”

“Untie me!” the demon demands.

I pry myself from Senhora Faiam’s fevered grasp. With fists raised to her cheeks, she shouts, “Would you serve Samael, the Devil, to avenge your uncle?!”

My confession clutches my throat: Yes! I would do anything to find him! Anything!

So what is holding me back? Gemila herself? She jerks upright with a grunt, her neck craning as she lifts up the bench to which she is tied. When she lets it drop with a crash, she writhes within her bindings as if impaled by a burning sword. She bites at the air for breath. When the tide inside her ebbs, she stares at me with her impenetrable eyes. “Untie me!” she demands.

Yelping turns me. Belo is scratching furiously at the door to the courtyard with his single front paw.

My uncle’s voice sounds inside me: “Do not abandon the living for the dead!” His hands grip my shoulders as I turn back to the demon. I begin to chant Psalm Ninety-One: “You shall find safety beneath his wings, shall not fear the hunters’ trap by night or the arrow that flies by day, the pestilence that stalks in darkness or the plague raging at noonday…”

“You will never find the murderer!” Maimon shouts. “Never!”

Senhora Faiam follows my lead, and the plies of our separate voices are united by the spinning wheel of psalm. We chant together: “You shall watch the punishment of the wicked. For you, the Lord is a safe retreat. You have made Him your refuge. No disaster shall befall you, no calamity shall come upon your home. For he has charged his angels to guard you wherever you go…”

Beyond my words, I turn inwardly from the demon, ascend the steps of silent prayer. Once atop a glowing parapet of inner vibration, supported by the bellows of my chest, I raise again my middle finger over Gemila. She looks around with darting eyes, strains against her ropes, mumbles obscenities in Hebrew, shrieks. Laughs squirt from her. She offers me a grin of beguiling enchantment pierced by a flicking tongue. But she is far below, entwined inside the psalm melody I now entrust to Senhora Faiam. God’s secret names are rising from my throat, flowing in and out of my nostrils as I match my breathing to the rhythm of the words. Light and dark entangle, then separate into stark relief. The world is lit as if by black flame. Time recedes into the distance, and in my heightened state, I see that it is the terror of abandonment that gives rise to Gemila’s laughter. Ascending still higher on the winged melody of psalm, I reach down to caress her cheek. Pain. A grip of evil. Cold wind. Blood sluicing across my hand. Shrieks. Senhora Faiam washing me.

“The demon has bitten you!” she shouts.

I wave her away, take up the chant again till the room grays and Maimon and I are staring at each other across a charged space which breathes slowly in and out. Bento approaches my body, touches its shoulder. “The bath is ready,” he says.

Gemila struggles like an animal as we strip her. I turn toward the bedroom; Gemila’s little boy, Menachim, is sitting inside, hugging Belo, crying. “You must leave us!” I say.

He jumps up, runs past us with the dog at his heels. Together, they dart out of the house.

The river water is pure and frigid. Gemila’s shrieks cut the air. Fists form, tendons strain on her neck. Her arms flail free of the ropes. A blow catches Senhora Faiam and sends her crashing. Gemila’s face contorts in banshee joy. Blood drips from her mouth, sends pink clouds through the churning water. She writhes as we hold her, every muscle slithering toward escape.

Soaked cold but heated by inner prayer, I chant as Bento holds his wife under. Until the airless cold numbs the fight out of her. Her teeth chatter. I hold the smoking incense under her face. Her lips go gray and her eyes glaze.

We lift her out. As Senhora Faiam dries her hair with a towel, she whispers soothing words. Bento kisses her hands.

“Please get back,” I say.

With a prayer from the Bahir, I pick the fish from his jar. I dip it flailing in the magic dye. Gemila sits shivering in her chair. I press the vermilion-dyed wriggling sole to the lifeline on her forehead. She starts as if burned. Quickly, I brush it down across her shoulders and breasts, abdomen, sex and feet, till I have covered each of the ten sefirot—primal points—with dye. When the fish has soaked up her symbolic essences, I drop it to the floor. As it flips across the tile, I close my eyes and intone magic words from Joshua: “Stand still, O Sun, in Bebeon, stand, Moon, in the Vale of Aijalon.”

With my eyes closed I roll my eyeballs until I can see the inner colors, jiggle my breath in and out until the wind of Metatron’s wings spins me. When I open my eyes, the sole is flexing its gills like a bellows. I slip it back in Bento’s water jar; the fish has written a message across the tile floor in exchange for its life.

I read as quick as I can. In a flashing spectrum of Arabic script, I discover the word: tair, bird. In this case, it is a veiled reference to the aperture through which the demon can be extracted.

Footsteps come from behind. Father Carlos faces me. From the mountaintop I have ascended on the inner wind of prayer and chant, it seems natural that he is here. I hold my finger to my lips. His eyes request judgment. I nod my ascent. He turns to Gemila, raises his middle finger over her and begins to chant our psalm in his commanding voice.

With blood from my fingertip, I etch Elohim along the fate-line in the young woman’s forehead in ketav einayim, angelic writing, a version of which I learned from Uncle. Her head tilts back as if her neck has wilted. Her eyes roll white. Before she can sleep, I take her nose between my thumb and forefinger. “I command thee,” I shout, “in the name of the God of Israel, depart from this Jewish body and cling no more!” In Aramaic, I shout a sequence of divine names. And I rip the demon out of her. She shrieks. Blood spurts from her nostrils. Falling forward onto me, she battles for breath. I wipe her face with my sleeve. “You are safe,” I whisper. “The demon is gone.”

She tries to speak but falls from consciousness.

Father Carlos and I keep vigil with Senhora Faiam and Bento. Gemila’s nose has dried. She has been scrubbed with soap and hot water. Her husband has eased her like a newborn baby into their bed. Her pulse comes slow and even, and color has returned to her cheeks. Menachim, her boy, kneels by her side and caresses her hair. The mound of blanket softly breathing at her feet is Belo curled under the covers. Father Carlos sits in his chair praying to himself. When I can face the possibility of another death, I whisper to him, “And Judah?”

He shakes his head and grimaces. “I don’t know where he is. When she wakes, we’ll talk of where I last saw him.” As his eyes close, tears press out and cling to his lashes.

My little brother’s disappearance and the demon’s words of temptation both haunt me with damp chill. I sit on the floor at the eastern corner of the room, chant Torah as a map that may lead both Gemila and me back to God. After a while, Carlos opens the shutters of a western window. The sky glows with fading light. The sun, disappearing below the horizon, seems to be seeking a permanent hiding place.

It is near midnight when Gemila finally wakes. She sits up, gazes with motherly benevolence at Menachim asleep by her side. She starts as she sees me. “Beri, what are you doing here?” she asks.

“You don’t remember?” I ask.

“No. What…what do you mean?”