The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon

“He’s slept enough! I’ve got to wake him.” As I start away, Cinfa rushes to me and presses warm into my chest. “Please don’t go out again! Something terrible is going to happen to you today, I know it!”

I should be moved, but I only want the girl away from me. I walk her back to the hearth. “Nothing is going to happen,” I whisper. “I promise you that I will never again let an Old Christian hurt me.”

I can see in her hollow expression that the thick layer of disbelief which protected her from grief has been stripped away. I hold her hand while I lead her and Father Carlos in morning prayers. Afterward, the priest says, “I’m going back to Sao Domingos to make some more inquiries after Judah.”

“Give it up, Carlos,” I advise. “If he’s still alive, we’ll find him. They’re not going to tell you anything. He’s just another bit of Jewish smoke to them.”

“No, I must go.”

“But it’s not safe. The Northerner may be out looking for you.”

“He’ll expect me at home. I’ll slip out the store entrance to Temple Street and walk down by the river. Nothing will happen.” Carlos nods at me as if he needs my approval.

It seems that courage has finally blessed the priest. “Very well,” I nod.

He bows, then shuffles away.

Alone with Cinfa, I say, “Give me a moment with Farid, then I’ll come back to you.”

Her face reddens and bloats. She stares at me ready to burst into tears. I reach for her, but she breaks away from me and runs out through the kitchen door.

Farid is still asleep, but color has animated his face. The skin of his arms and legs is supple, warm. Mother’s talismans dangle over him like crazy confirmations of his health. Knowing that the angels have backed away, a grateful fullness rises as moisture to my eyes, propels me to the window to offer thanks to God. Belo, ears pointing, stares out over the wall of Senhora Faiam’s house, his one front leg propping him up firmly. Blessed are men and women, children and dogs, I think. With so much beauty in the world, does the existence of a personal God really matter so much? Can’twe be satisfied with what we’ve got?When I look down, I discover Carlos’ Nazarene, broken from his cross, still lying in the street. The figure and I share questions aimed at an impenetrable future. Farid wakes, taps the bed frame twice to get my attention. “Have you heard from Samir?” he signals.

“Nothing. I’m sorry. Just a second…” I retrieve his fathers sandals from my room, kneel by my friends side and offer them to him. I gesture, “I didn’t think it right to show you these before, while you were so… The man at the mosque said that your father left so quickly after the riot started that he forgot them.”

When Farid grips the sandals, his eyes shut tight. His thumbs trace the outline of the straps, and he sniffs at the leather. Scenting Samir, his lips curl out, his face seems to peel open. The tendons on his neck strain up toward the judgment of God’s wrath. He begins to moan. I lock both hands with him and attempt to pull him free with the strength of my love.

Slowly, Farid’s waves of grief subside to a silent flow. When he leans up on one elbow and wipes his eyes with his sheet, I gesture a simple, “I’m sorry.”

He nods and blows his nose on his shirt sleeve.

I sit by his side, signal, “You had dysentery. With everything else, I almost missed the diagnosis. I think it was that rice you bought when we were walking back to Lisbon on Monday.”

He sweeps his hand across his lips to thank me, then unfurls it in the air to praise the generosity of Allah. His movements are sure, woven by recaptured faith. Envy for his belief in a beneficent God tugs me to my feet.

“What day is it?” he asks.

“Friday.”

“Already approaching the Sabbath.” He shakes his head and takes a deep breath as if summoning his body’s long-dormant resources. “What more have you found out about Uncle’s murder?”

I explain, then show him my drawing of the ragamuffin who tried to sell Uncle’s Haggadah, then hand him the letters from Tu Bisvat.

“Now we have something,” he signals as he glances over the first letter, and he translates the important information it contains with rhythmic ease: “I have waited to write to you, Master Abraham, in the hopes that more safira would be arriving. But as there has been nothing of late, I am beginning to wonder. Has something happened to our Zerubbabel? Or perhaps you are ill. Please send me news. I begin to worry.”

There is a moment when the miniature world of a manuscript becomes real, when the contours of a prophet’s hands or twinkle in a heroine’s eyes glow again inside the eternal present that is Torah. A similar sentiment of time’s cessation captures me now, turns my vision inside. A path unfurls before me. It leads from Lisbon across Spain and Italy toward the Orient. Uncle walks along it, and he is carrying his beloved manuscripts, smiling with the joy of the gift-giver.

These images descend to me because this letter seems to make it clear that the path of my master’s smuggled books led to Constantinople. And that his accomplice in the Turkish capital, Tu Bisvat, had not received scheduled shipments, was worried that something had befallen Uncle. This news must have alerted him to the possibility that he was being betrayed by one or more of his couriers. Probably, my master kept this information to himself until he could be sure of the criminal’s identity. And in the meantime, he went to see Dom Miguel Ribeiro to try to recruit a new accomplice who could carry manuscripts across Portugal’s borders with relative ease. When the nobleman refused to participate, Uncle wrote to Samson Tijolo, who, because of his wine business, might also have been able to obtain permission to travel abroad.

As for Zerubbabel, he was a character in the Book of Ezra, of course. It was under his leadership that Solomon’s Temple was rebuilt during the reign of King Darius of Persia.

But who was he in this context? A coded name for the man who delivered Uncle’s smuggled manuscripts to Constantinople?

In the second letter from Tu Bisvat, the author makes reference to the zulecha, tile, that he is willing to buy for Uncle in Constantinople. “I don’t understand,” I tell Farid.

He signals, “In this context, I think it is a veiled reference to a building block for a home. Your uncle may have been negotiating to buy a house on the European side of the Bosporus—the sunset side of Constantinople.”

Chapter XV

To Farid, I signal, “So Uncle was planning all along to move, was waiting for the negotiations to be completed before telling us about Constantinople. Byzantium, imagine… A Moslem land. If only he’d shared this information with me. I’m sure we could have all worked harder to raise the money. But perhaps he feared being caught and then compromising.

The cascade of my surprised signalling is halted by Aunt Esther calling to me from the kitchen. “My God, her soul has returned to her body!” I whisper.

He reads my lips, gestures urgently, “Go to her! She may need you to pull her all the way back to our world!”

As I run in, I see that my aunt is not alone. She holds Cinfa in front of her like a human shield. An old man stands next to her. He is gaunt and tall, very pale, with spiky white hair and furry, caterpillar eyebrows. A man constructed from snow, it seems. Esther’s eyes follow me gravely. “You may remember Afonso Verdinho,” she says. “He was in Uncle’s threshing group.”

O Sinistro, the man from the left side, we used to call him with a certain ambivalent affection. It was a double entendre taken from the Italian language referencing Dom Afonso’s left- handedness and grim otherworldliness. Uncle liked him as a curiosity, used to say that he read the Torah as if it were fixed in fish glue—a consequence of the uncompromising asceticism he picked up while studying with Sufis in Persia. So where has it all gone? Now that I know his identity, he appears even older and more wilted, as if he has been starved and stretched in a lightless  chamber. Yellowing sweat stains show under the arms of his crumpled white shirt. A shabby black cloak lined with frayed blue silk hangs over his arm. As our eyes meet, his lips twist