The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon

uncomfortably. Neither of us makes a move toward greeting.

“You remember him, don’t you?” Esther prompts. “You were but a boy when…”

“I remember him,” I answer curtly. A sense of imminent disaster fixes me as if in crystal.

“Berekiah, I’m going to stay with Afonso for a while,” she continues, speaking slowly and gently. “He rode here when word about the riot reached Tomar. He’s rented rooms at Senhor Duarte’s inn by Reza’s house. We’ll be there. Please tell your mother. I don’t want to wake her. But if she needs me, she can come for me.”

“I don’t understand,” I say.

My aunt reaches to her temples, rubs them as if trying to center scattering thoughts. Cinfa twists to gaze up at her, then bolts out of the house. Esther calls after her in vain.

Afonso’s expression becomes one of gentle compassion as he whispers to Esther in Persian. His protective arm circles her shoulders. He hugs her to him. To me, he says in a dry voice, “Just give your aunt some time. Try to understand that the journey is far more complex than you once thought.”

He leads Esther into the courtyard. Huddling together, they disappear through the gate. Jealousy, thick and hot as pitch, sluices through my chest; cruel is the knowledge that a virtual stranger could revive my aunt when I could do nothing.

And that she would abandon her family at this time—it seems impossible!

Dom Afonso…does his presence change everything? Could he have been involved in Uncle’s murder, in smuggling his books? But he moved from Lisbon prior to the forced conversion, long before my master and my father dug the genizah.

An absurd disappointment buries itself in my gut, is linked to the knowledge that life is not a book, does not hold margin notes explaining difficult events. If it were, Dom Afonso would have remained seated in front of his fireplace in Tomar. His arrival only serves to complicate what is already out of my control.

I hear my uncle say: dearest Berekiah, life presents us with many  paths leading nowhere, doors opening upon sheer drops, staircases risingto locked gates. And I remember that he used to tell me that all life is a pilgrimage to the Sabbath. Even if it is, I think, then nearly all of us take the most circuitous routes trying to get there.

I plod back to Farid. “People are very odd creatures,” I comment.

“Why? What happened?”

When I explain, he signals, “You don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?” I ask.

“They were lovers long ago. Samir told me.”

“Are you crazy, Afonso and…”

“It all ended years ago. It means nothing.”

His words are too simple to understand. The floor grows moist, slides away like sluicing floodwaters. Farid’s gesturing hands anchor me in a spinning world.

Could Esther have been involved in Uncle’s murder after all? Maybe in passing she divulged to Dom Afonso the existence of our genizah. He could have acted on his own out of continuing passion for her.

Farid senses my thoughts, signals, “A house of cards on a slanted table in a sandstorm.”

“Not if she didn’t know about Dom Afonso’s plans. Perhaps he hid his scheming from her. Even now, she doesn’t suspect that the man giving her solace is her husband’s murderer!”

“But from Tu Bisvat’s letter, we know that one of Uncle’s smugglers was very likely to have been involved. Unless you can believe that Afonso was one of them…that he was Zerubbabel.”

Farid and I sit in an expanding silence for quite some time; I am still awe-struck by Esther’s departure. My friend signals to me from time to time, but I pay no attention until he grabs my arm. “Someone with a strange walk has entered the house,” he gestures. “I can feel the vibrations.”

A man calls my name suddenly from the kitchen. I rush in. The “dead” thresher and fabric importer Simon Eanes stands in the doorway, leaning heavily on his crutches, his time-worn mantle of charcoal velvet draped over his shoulders. He hasn’t shaved or bathed, and a large scab centers his forehead like a wounded eye. Cinfa is with him, is hugging him like an abandoned child. As he caresses his gloved hand across her hair, he offers me a nod of solidarity. “Berekiah, I heard about Master Abraham,” he says.

Involuntarily, I look at his foot to make sure that it is human. “You’re not dead,” I observe.

He shakes his head and smiles, a crazy smile, too wide, as if his lips have been pulled apart by a puppeteer working invisible strings.

The power of shared survival tethers us together, and I step toward him. But his gloves! The one covering his right hand is ripped across its back. Could the silk thread found under Uncle’s thumbnail really have been…. Wary, I hold myself back. He fixes another caricature of a grin on his face.

“Are you okay?” I ask. “What happened? Your landlord said….”

“Just fine,” he nods. “I told him to tell anyone enquiring after me that I was dead. It seemed safer at the time. Then I fled Lisbon. I’ve only just gotten back.”

Dearest God, I think, will Judah, too, return from the dead? Or is that too much to hope for?

Simon accepts the stale matzah I offer with gracious bows. “Uncle is not the only thresher who died,” I say. “Samson, too.”

“I know. He had just visited my store. I told him to stay, to hide with me. But he wanted to get back to Rana and their baby. He was grabbed not fifty paces from the doorway…hadn’t a chance with those Christian rioters everywhere.”

My body seems very distant. I want to try to trick him, but all that emerges from my mouth is the truth. “Diego and Father Carlos made it. And now, Afonso Verdinho is back in Lisbon.”

Simon nods, grins fleetingly as if he hasn’t heard me and is being polite. We sit opposite each other. Cinfa mumbles to herself about chores to do so that I’ll think she has not been listening to our conversation. My irritated look forces her to skip off into the courtyard.

A taut smile opens on Simon’s face, seems painted by a talentless illuminator. I ask, “Is something amusing?”

“No.”

I point to his forehead. “You’re injured. Were you hit by someone?”

Simon reaches up to the scab, tells me how he tripped over a tumbrel while hiding in a feather-trimmer’s workshop, laughs while showing more lesions on his knee. Then he tells a silly anecdote about a dog peeing on a false leg he once tried, grins and blinks, grins some more. His eyes dart nervously around the room when silence finally overtakes speech.

In his grief he has decided to become court jester to a tyrant God.

“We’re out of wine,” I tell him. “But would you like some brandy? We have some incense from Goa left that might…”

“No, no. I’m fine.”

Farid shuffles in, lowers himself next to me. He responds to Simon’s smile with an awkward, probing tilt to his head. When it goes unanswered, my friend signals to me, “He’s like a starving jasmine blooming madly before it dies.”

More to dispel his false cheer than anything else, I tell Simon of my mother and Aunt Esther and the disappearances of Judah and Samir. He nods as if he’s heard my stories before. To test his reactions, I say, “I found a rosary bead near Uncle’s body. It is my belief that Father Carlos murdered my uncle.”

“Carlos, but what possible reason could he have for killing Master Abraham?” he asks.

“They argued over a manuscript that the priest wouldn’t give to Uncle,” I reply.

Simon smiles as if he’s humoring me, steps his fingers like a spider across the table.

“Well, what do you say?” I ask angrily.

“What do you want me to say? I think it’s absurd. But if it’s what you want to believe, then who am I to dispel your illusions? I’m through trying to find the truth. Illusions are fine. We should all be blessed with a garden of flowering lies—it’s much easier to live that way.”

Cinfa steps back inside. She huddles under Farid’s arm.

“You shouldn’t listen to me,” Simon suddenly sighs. “I’m an old fool who no longer has any courage. But for