The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon

a New Christian growing wealthy from taxes on their merchandise, and he was the most hated of our compatriots. “How did it happen?” I ask.

“How? Like everyone else. A mob came to his house. Ripped the gates down. He escaped across the rooftops of Little Jerusalem. Imagine, fleeing like a common Jew. Made it to…”

“Carlos, I can’t believe you don’t get it!” I shout. “To them, we’ve all got horns and tails. Every last one of us. No matter whether we drop gold leaf into our soup or only egg yolk!”

A prayer for Dom Joao’s soul unites our voices. “Enough religious duty,” I say. “Questions… First, do you know the identity of those who helped Uncle smuggle Hebrew books from Portugal?”

Carlos shakes his head.

“Have you no suspicions?” I ask.

“None. Unless it was one of the other threshers. Master Abraham said it was better for no one to know. In case we were caught.”

“Then that leaves Diego…Simon and Samson are dead. Did Uncle say…”

“Dead?!” Carlos interrupts. “But you just said that you suspected Simon!”

“No, they’re dead. I was…was testing you.”

“Berekiah, I need to know the truth. Are my brothers in kabbalah dead or alive? Tell me now!”

“Simon’s landlord said he was dragged away by the mob and turned to ash. Samson’s father-in-law told me that he saw him captured by the mob.”

Father Carlos’ shoulders sag. He reaches up to rub his eyes. I ask, “Did Uncle say anything to you about Haman…or mention anything strange about Diego?”

“Not Diego, too?!” he replies. “You believe that he could have been involved in…”

“Uncle was killed with a shohet’s blade. By someone who knew the location of our trap door and genizah. It could have only been a thresher. Or one of Uncle’s secret smugglers, assuming that they, too, had been entrusted with my master’s secrets.”

“And what’s this about Haman?” the priest asks.

“Uncle’s last Haggadah was stolen. I believe he had modeled the face of Haman upon the smuggler who was betraying him…or whom he suspected of betrayal.”

“He made no mention of it to me,” Carlos says.

“Did he speak ill of anyone of late?”

“No, no one.”

“Had Diego been fully inducted into the threshing group?” I ask.

“You mean, did he know of the existence of the genizah?”

“Yes, and the secret passage from our cellar to the micvah.”

“You found out! How? Or did you already know of it?”

“It would take too long to explain, Carlos. Another death led me to it. Just tell me if Diego knew about it,” I plead.

“Not that I know of,” he replies.

“And the genizah?”

“No. Master Abraham made it quite clear we were not to discuss such matters with him for the time being.”

Then it was nigh impossible that Diego had held the shohet’s blade. And so, if Father Carlos were telling the truth, all the threshers were innocent. The murderer could only be one or more of Uncle’s secret smugglers. I ask, “Did you use the secret passageway often?”

“Hardly ever,” the priest replies.

“Good,” I comment.

“Why, ‘good?’”

“That might explain why the killer didn’t know beforehand that he couldn’t make it through. The tunnel thins. I could barely make it. Anyone larger… So he must have rushed back into the cellar and when he heard me calling from upstairs, hid in the genizah. Then, when I went to the courtyard for nails with which to seal the trap door shut, he crept upstairs and left the house through our store—Gemila saw him on Temple Street, cursed the Lord and thereby opened herself up to the invasion of an ibbur. The killer must have had a demonic appearance. White Maimon of the Two Mouths,’ she called him. He probably had a very light complexion. Might have been cowled. Or maybe he wore a concealing hat whose chin strap looked like another mouth to her.” I take the priest’s shoulder. “Carlos, I must check my uncle’s correspondence to see if he named his smugglers. And there’s a drawing I want to show you. Of a boy who tried to sell the stolen Haggadah. But we need more light.”

I’m about to continue up the street toward our gate, but Father Carlos grabs my arm. “So who do you suppose might have had the courage to smuggle books with your uncle?”

“Don’t know. But we probably know him. Maybe they even feigned dislike.”

With those words, a perverse thought comes to me. Who was it, aside from King Manuel and certain Christian clerics, whom Uncle despised most in this world? Dear old Rabbi Losa! But what if that antagonism was a show? With his burgeoning business as an official outfitter of the clergy, Losa travelled anywhere he wanted, would have been able to shepherd Hebrew manuscripts to safety. I ask the priest, “Did Uncle ever mention Rabbi Losa in the threshing meetings?”

“Only rarely. And usually with contempt.”

“Carlos, would you come with me to Losa’s house, now? The correspondence can wait a little longer. For some perverse reason I cannot fathom, the rabbi always liked you. And I very much need to talk with him.”

“He likes me because I’m as frightened as he is,” Carlos observes. “We occasionally enjoy trembling together.”

As the priest and I head off to the rabbi’s house, he asks in a cowering voice, “So do you forgive me?”

“Forgive you?” I ask.

“For not protecting Judah. I need to know.”

“Of course I forgive you. You are as much a victim as… Look, Carlos, I’m not sure if I’m Jewish anymore, but I’m no Christian Inquisitor either.”

“Not Jewish?! Berekiah, you have to believe in something!”

“Oh, do I? Do I really?!”

“Of course.”

I stop walking. Deep into my belly and up through my chest I inhale the night scents from the thick wilderness surrounding this pitiful settlement called Lisbon. I say, “Breathe in that darkness, Carlos. Something new is out there between the odor of shit and smoke and forest. A new landscape is forming, a secular countryside that will give us sanctuary from the burning shores of religion. We’ve only gotten a whiff of it so far. But it’s coming. And nothing the Old Christians can do can keep it from giving us refuge.”

Carlos answers with a preacherly, skeptical voice: “Pray tell me, dear Berekiah, what will this new landscape have as a foundation if not religion?”

“I haven’t got a clue, Carlos. The landscape hasn’t condensed yet. There’ll be mystics and skeptics, of that I have no doubt. But neither priests nor friars, nor deacons nor bishops nor Popes will find a home there. If they take one step on our land, we’ll throw them right out on their heads. And no didactic rabbis, either. The minute you unfurl your scroll of commandments, we’ll slit your throat!”

“You should beg for God’s forgiveness for that,” Carlos warns me.

“Go sing it to the goats! I’m through begging! My God grants neither forgiveness nor punishment.”

“Ein Sof?” the priest asks, referencing the kabbalistic concept of an unknowable God without any recognizable attributes. When I nod, he adds: “There’s little comfort in a God beyond everything.”

“Ah, comfort… For that, my dear friend, I want a wife to lie with at night and children to hug, not God. You can keep the Lord written on the pages of the Old and New Testaments for yourself. I’ll take the one who’s unwritten.”

Carlos shakes his head as if to consign me to a world he’ll never understand. We’ve reached Rabbi Losa’s house. I wait around the corner. In response to the priest’s knocks, Losa’s teenage daughter Esther-Maria opens an upstairs shutter, brushes tangled hair from weary eyes.