The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon

Master Abraham’s sake I will try to face the truth, if you like. Now tell me, you believe he was murdered by someone who knew him…a New Christian?” His questioning eyes seem almost hopeful, as if death by a Jew’s hand is preferable to Uncle having been murdered by a follower of the Nazarene.

“It’s very likely,” I answer. As I explain about the shohet’s blade and our stolen minerals, Simon bites his lip. He glances suggestively at Cinfa until his meaning becomes obvious. I ask the girl to fetch some salvaged fruit from the store for our guest.

“I understand,” she seethes. “But he was my uncle too!” She glares at me. “I’ll get fruit to help Farid get well. But not because you asked me!”

When I reach out to her, she twists away and runs out.

“I don’t know what to do with her,” I confess. “One minute she’s frightened for me, the next…”

“Time will take care of it,” Simon smiles.

“You sound like Dom Afonso Verdinho.”

“Yes, when did he return?”

“Just rode in,” I say. “Curious isn’t it?”

“What do you mean? You think that he, too, might have been…”

“It’s possible.”

“Tell me more about Master Abraham’s departure from the Lower Realms.”

In tones that race one step ahead of emotion, I describe to Simon how I found Uncle and the girl, the positions of their bodies, slits on their necks. In response, he grins, but his lips quiver. A battle is being waged for his emotions. Interrupting me suddenly, he says in a pressing tone, “And was there nothing else out of the ordinary on your uncle’s body?”

My heart beats a code spelling out the words, um fio de seda, a silken thread, but I simply say, “Such as…?”

Simon shrugs as if to disclaim his coming words. “Semente branca,” he whispers, using the kabbalist’s term, “white seed,” for semen.

“How did…?” My question is blocked by his upraised hand.

“In Seville, a member of the Jewish community informed on me. I never found out who it was. The Inquisitors don’t tell the prisoners, of course. I recanted, but they locked me away anyway. Those black marks on your uncle’s neck—they were bruises. I’ve seen them before. From hanging or garroting or…” He looks down as his smile fails. He wipes at his eyes with his shirt sleeve. “The semen emerges as a bodily reaction to pressure on the neck and windpipe,” he continues. “Not in everyone. But it happens. I have a theory that as God approaches to rescue the righteous victim, joy mounts. There is an orgasm. Perhaps even God has an orgasm at that very moment. Your uncle might have known. In any case, the victim faces the Creator as ecstasy ascends to meet pain. As a Master of the Names of God, your uncle would, of course, have reached a very powerful orgasm almost immediately.”

“You’re saying he was hanged first. But there was no rope, no…”

“Or garroted, even strangled. With a rope or hands. And…”

“It was with a rosary,” I interrupt. “I didn’t lie about the bead I found.”

“And then your shohet slit his throat,” Simon continues. “Out of habit, perhaps. Or to be certain. One can never be too sure with a kabbalist of such magnitude. There are ways…”

Farid signals, “It would have to be someone he’d allow to get close enough to harm him. Zerubbabel… whoever he is, must have come.”

Wanting to keep secret my knowledge that one of Uncle’s smugglers may have been involved in his murder, I refrain from translating the last sentence for Simon. He laughs in a single exhale. “A man like me, Farid means.”

Simon’s fawnlike hesitation has disappeared completely to make way for this new personality of his.

“Yes,” I say. “Like you.”

“Berekiah, I’m not going to defend myself. Your uncle ransomed me from Christian death. I would sooner have killed myself than…”

“And yet we found something that may belong to you,” I say.

“What?”

“Give me one of your gloves and I’ll tell you.”

He shrugs as if ceding to pointlessness, peels the ripped one free and hands it to me. I reach into my pouch and extract the thread. It is a match; the same black silk, not a shade of difference. “It was caught on one of Uncle’s fingernails. It’s yours.”

After Simon has examined the thread, he pushes up on the table to stand, gives me a sympathetic look. “It may be the same—I’m no expert. But it could have been obtained from my shop, from most any of the silk stores in Little Jerusalem. But of course, you’re wondering just how my glove was ripped.”

To my nod, he responds in a poetic voice, “When running on one leg, one has a tendency to fall. When falling on stone, one will rip silk. A wonderful material, this fabric of worms, but they who spin it for cocoons do not foresee the idiocy of men.”

He reaches for his crutches, inserts their leather pads under his arms. My shame at persecuting a man loved by my master mixes with a perverse desire to continue my assault until I have driven every last possibility of happiness from his soul. I say, “Simon, it’s a time of masks. And I don’t really know what’s under yours. Just like you don’t know what’s under mine. For all I know, the man you truly are is patting himself on the back for having fooled me.”

He hops in order to adjust his crutches. “My old mask was burned long ago in the pyre that consumed my wife. My new one… I don’t even know what it looks like.” He slips on his glove with an air of resignation. “Maybe I did have a terrible fight with your uncle when no one was looking. That’s what would be assumed by an Inquisitor. But is that what you’ve become? A Jewish mystic turned Inquisitor?!” A bitter laugh rises from his gut. “You wouldn’t be the first, would you? Everything is possible in Spain and Portugal. God bless these lands of miracles.”

Is Simon’s the cynical defense of the world-weary or the sham of a killer? I ask, “Do you know who was smuggling books with Uncle?” When he shakes his head, I say, “Have you no suspicions?”

“None. I’ve become skilled at not thinking certain thoughts. In fact, not thinking is a special talent one develops in Castile and Andalusia. Go there someday and you will see how valued it is in the good citizens of those hateful provinces.”

I unscroll for him the drawing of the boy who tried to sell Senhora Tamara my master’s last Haggadah. “Ever see him?”

“Not that I know of,” he replies.

“And Tu Bisvat?”

“What about it?”

“Not ‘it.’ There’s a man in Constantinople who uses that pen name… who was receiving Uncle’s smuggled manuscripts.”

Simon shakes his head, says, “There must be a hundred kabbalists in Constantinople. This Tu Bisvat could be any of them. Master Abraham told us not to concern ourselves with these other activities of his. We respected his wishes. Just as you did, dear Berekiah.”

As he shows me his pitiful grin once again, the desire to slap him burns in my chest. “And Haman?” I ask gruffly.

“What of him?”

“Did Uncle tell you whose face was given to Haman in his last Haggadah?”

Simon shakes his head and walks with his crutches to the door. He turns to me with his hand shading his eyes. The jester has disappeared; he has the vacant look of a man whose hopes have been dashed. He whispers in an urgent voice, “Berekiah, I came to tell you something. A Spanish nobleman staying at the Estaus Palace is asking around town for Hebrew books, illuminated manuscripts in particular. The Sabbath before your Uncle’s death, I was approached about selling some. I don’t know where he got my name. He would not tell me. Beware of all of us if you like. But beware of him in particular. It may be tempting to sell your uncle’s books to raise some money for bribes to escape Portugal. But I don’t trust this man.”

“And his name?”