The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon

“Sorry to wake you. Your father home?” Carlos asks.

“Out,” she answers.

“Where?”

“Don’t know.”

“Will you tell him that I want to talk with him? I’ll be at Pedro Zarco’s house or St. Peter’s. Tell him to come as soon as he can. Even if he has to wake us. And tell him that we mean him no harm.”

She nods. The priest and I trudge back home, sit in the courtyard. Guilt at our being left alive pervades us both like a morbid melody. I slip inside for an oil lamp, bring it back out, unscroll my drawing of the lad who tried to sell Uncle’s last Haggadah to Senhora Tamara. Shining a circle of light upon the sketch, I ask, “Have you seen him before?”

Carlos holds the drawing right up to his face. “No,” he replies. As I take my drawing back, he asks in a hopeful voice, “May I stay here till morning? I can’t be alone.”

“We’ve got no other choice. You mustn’t go near your apartment or St. Peter’s. A henchman, a blond Northerner, has been sent by the murderer to kill Diego. He may be after you, too.”

“Me?!” The priest starts and his lazy eyes open as if he’s swallowed poison. “Then maybe that explains…” He takes from his cape a square of vellum with tufts of yard sewn at the corners like tzitzit. It looks like a child’s toy. “Read,” he says, holding it out to me.

A crude figure of a man is outlined with miniature Hebrew lettering, each character no bigger than an ant. The language used is a curious mixture of Hebrew and Portuguese, and the words are from the book of Job: She abandons her eggs to the ground, letting them be kept warm by the sand. She forgets that a foot may crush them, or a wild beast trample on them.

“When did you get this?” I ask.

“Last Friday. I found it slipped under the door of my apartment. At first, I thought it was from your uncle. I thought he was trying to scare me so he could get the book he wanted from me.” Carlos smiles as he adds, “Then, I thought that it might have been left by you.”

I roll my eyes. “And now that your mind has come home to roost after its errant voyage?”

“Now I don’t know. But if someone killed your uncle and now wants to kill me… Maybe this talisman is from him. Maybe the book I have has to do with your uncle’s death! Maybe it’s more valuable than we think.”

“Can you get it for me?”

“No. It’s in my apartment. And the Northerner… Beri, it was my last page of Judaism. I held it back because I had to. Your uncle was asking me to retain nothing of what I was.”

“It’s all right, Carlos. But do have any idea why it would be so valuable?”

He shakes his head, says, “There are other copies extant. It’s hardly unique.”

“Are there notes in the margins?”

“Nothing. Perhaps whoever was smuggling books with your uncle decided he simply wanted it for himself, didn’t want it to leave the country.”

“That doesn’t seem plausible. After shepherding a hundred or more valuable works across the border, there’s no logical reason why the smuggler would suddenly turn against Uncle simply because of your manuscript. Not only that, but there were several precious manuscripts in the genizah which the killer passed up to take Uncle’s Haggadah.” I hold up the talisman for inspection, see that the word sand, areia, is spelled incorrectly. “This has been done in haste, probably in secret,” I observe. “By someone without a complete eduction in Torah. And without formal training as a scribe. Although the ink is very good. An amateur scribe who has access to the best, I’d say. Right handed, of course, because of the slope of the characters. As for the yarn…” I sniff at it, run the plies between my fingers. “Rather old, I’d say. Smells of cedar. Kept in a trunk, perhaps. If we want to know more, we’ll need Farid’s help. Perhaps even the ink has a characteristic smell.” I look to Carlos. “The creator of this talisman was someone who wants to scare you. But if he wanted to kill you, he wouldn’t have bothered sending such a warning. May I hold on to it?”

He nods. “Just keep it away from me.” He leans his head back suddenly and yawns. “Sometimes I think that I could sleep for a century or two,” he says.

I say, “Look Carlos, you can take my bed. Grab an extra blanket from the chest.”

“The courtyard’s fine.”

“Your suffering won’t bring anyone back.”

“Beri, I need to see the sky, the stars. Let me sit here. I’ll sleep when God grants me grace.”

With a futile shrug, I wish him sound sleep. On my way to the cellar, I spot my mother standing in her bedroom, a shadow keeping vigil over Farid. I go to her, find her hugging to her chest a vellum talisman in the shape of a magreifah, a mythical ten-holed flute. We look at each other across a landscape beyond speech. With common purpose we shift our gaze to Farid. He breathes freely now, as if re- entering our world. Has an exchange been made? Farid for Judah? Is that why Mother will not take her eyes from him?

I whisper to her, “Thank you for giving him your bed and for watching over him.”

She takes my hand, squeezes it. The scent of henbane clings to her. In a drowsy voice, she says, “If only he were one of us.”

“It no longer matters,” I say.

“You’re wrong, Berekiah. It matters more than ever.”

We seem representatives of different races. I kiss her neck, shuffle down into the cellar. But there is little in Uncle’s correspondence to give me hope. Only two letters hold promise, both from the same person. The first is dated the Third of Shevat of this year and written in Arabic. Uncle must have received it just prior to his death. It is signed in florid script in the shape of a menorah. As best I can make out—for the elder generation of kabbalists love to confound the casual reader—the correspondent’s name is Tu Bisvat. Of course, this is just a pseudonym, Tu Bisvat being the name of a Jewish holiday which our mystics associate with the tree of life and certain reparations performed here and in God’s Upper Realms.

Unfortunately, my Arabic is woefully inadequate for the correspondent’s florid style. There is no doubt, however, that the author makes at least one reference to a safira which Uncle was sending to him.

The second letter dates from almost exactly a year ago, is also in Arabic. I can decipher nothing that makes any sense. If I were forced to make a translation, I’d have said that Uncle was negotiating to buy a tile decorating the center of a sunset.

I will need Farid’s help to remove the serpentine vines of Arabic code from both letters.

Before I close the genizah, I examine all the correspondence once again, this time to compare the writing with Carlos’ talisman. There are none which match.

Upstairs, I find Farid snoring away. His forehead no longer burns. Although tempted, I do not wake him; it is the first sound sleep he’s had in days. I sit in the kitchen to wait for him to stir, the letters from Tu Bisvat safely in my pouch. Onto the smoldering embers of our fire I toss pinches of cinnamon. A shower of red-glowing sparkles pricks at the air like shooting stars. I realize that I’m filthy with dust and grime, but my moist stench is comforting. It is as if it is a Jewish smell, as if I have agreed to make a permanent home in grief, as if revenge—once I find Uncle’s killer—will intensify this musky scent and render it divine.

I awake early Friday morning at the kitchen table to the smell of brackish seawater—great hides of salted codfish are soaking in a cauldron of water by my head. Roosters cry the dawn. Cinfa and Father Carlos are preparing verbena tea.

It is the seventh day of Passover, and the final evening of the holiday will descend tonight. The fear that time is running out for me to catch the killer shakes me fully awake.

Cinfa fixes my gaze with a cheerful face. “Mother says a person can live like a king on just codfish and eggs,” she observes. Her imploring eyes seek to have me confirm her fantasy happiness.

But I am weighted by a sense of entrapment. The house is a prison; Cinfa and Father Carlos unlikely prophets of survival. Jumping up, I ask, “Rabbi Losa hasn’t come, has he?”

“Not yet,” the priest answers.

“And Farid?”

“Still snoring.”