The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon

burning cheeks, there descends to me the calming assurance that our connection can never be broken. Then, and during many days since, I have often thought that my life would have been much simpler had I been able to find physical fulfillment in his arms.

We rush home encased in our separate thoughts. The possibility that the Count of Almira has turned us both to marionettes turns the city into a ragged backdrop of gray scenery. Was Joanna’s whisper, too, just a part of a puppeteer’s plot?

By the entrance to our store, Farid marches away from me toward his house without even signalling goodbye.

Mother and Cinfa are arranging fruit at the back of our store. Miraculously, the doors to Temple Street are back on the hinges and have been painted deep blue. I’m about to ask about them when Mother says in a burdened tone, “We’ve been waiting. Are you ready to say prayers?”

Her hair is disheveled, her eyes drowsy. It must be the extract of henbane. I say, “Give me five minutes.”

“Sabbath has waited long enough!” she shouts.

“Two minutes then!”

In the kitchen, Aviboa is asleep on a pillow. Reza is boiling cod in our copper cauldron. “Brites came,” she whispers to me. “I gave her the soiled sheet you hid in the courtyard.”

“Bless you,” I say, kissing her cheek. “Did Rabbi Losa stop by, by any chance?”

“No.”

“Who painted the doors to the store and put them back on?”

“Bento. As partial thanks for extracting the ibbur from Gemila, he told me to tell you.”

“Good. Listen, stall my mother for a few minutes if you can.”

Reza nods. Dashing down into the cellar, I slip the genizah key from our eel bladder and take out Uncle’s personal Haggadah. Sitting with it on my lap, my heart drumming, I page through the illustrations looking for Zerubbabel. His panel tops the sixth page of illuminations prefacing the text. In my uncle’s rendering, he is a young man with long black hair and zealous eyes. He stands in a posture of righteous pride before King Darius, who has the optimistic, outward-looking face of Prince Henry the Navigator. Both men stand in front of the limestone tower of the Almond Farm. In his right hand, Zerubbabel carries a scrolled Torah, the essence of truth. In the left is the golden Hebrew letter He, a symbol of the divine woman, Binah. Two emerald rings shine from the index and middle fingers of his right hand.

These gemstones gift me with Zerubbabel’s true identity; men’s faces age, emeralds do not. Zerubbabel is none other than the Count of Almira.

“The sun’s chariot is about to pass beyond the horizon,” Reza calls down. “You’re making the Sabbath bride wait for her betrothal. And it is the last evening of Passover. Come up now!”

“Let her wed without me!” I shout up.

“Stop being so stubborn!”

“Reza, you know the prayers. You’ve got a voice. Do it yourself!”

“What serpent has eaten your sense, Berekiah Zarco? You know I can’t conduct services.”

“Then have Mother,” I say. “Just leave me be. Please.”

“We need a man, you idiot!”

It is blasphemous, but I shout, “The Sabbath bride needs only a voice, not a penis! Get Cinfa to lead you if you’re afraid.”

Reza slams the trap door to the cellar. We have peace.

I page through the panels of the Haggadah searching for Queen Esther. Her regal face confronts me from the bottom of the very next page. Her identity makes my heart race; Esther, the Jewish Queen who kept her religion a secret and who later saved her people from the wrath of the evil courtier Haman, is none other than Dona Meneses! Here, she is depicted carrying the Torah to Mordecai, her adopted father. Partially concealed beneath her arm is a manuscript, probably the Bahir—the Book of Light—since Uncle has gifted it with a brilliant nimbus. The face of Mordecai is someone I’ve never seen. But he wears a Byzantine cross, a Jewish prayer shawl and a blue aba fringed with green arabesques. Is it a reference to a man of the Eastern Church? A Jewish friend in a Moorish kingdom? A dervish from Turkey? “Someone who reconciles all of the Holy Land’s religions,” I hear my uncle say. To myself I whisper, “Or a man who wears all three masks.”

Perhaps, I think, he is Tu Bisvat.

These findings extract thought from me for a time. Then I realize that for so important a discovery, I must have the confirmation of Farid’s falcon eyes. As I poke my head form the trap door into the kitchen, Reza says, “So, Berekiah Zarco, you’ve come to your senses after all!”

I rush past her, ducking my eyes from the Sabbath ceremony. Farid is in his bedroom. On his knees, facing Mecca, his eyes closed, he sways forward toward the ground like a palm leaf bending in a breeze. When his back raises up, a furrowing in his brow indicates that he knows I’m with him. Yet his eyes do not open. He lowers himself again. Anger stiffens me when he refuses to acknowledge my presence with a hand signal. The word betrayal engraves itself in my mind. With my heel, I tap thrice, then once, then four more times. He sits up. Passive eyes open. I signal, “Please, I need your clear vision.”

He stands, his face elongated into a dry expression of feigned disinterest. Gliding like a ghost, he follows me into my house. Reza says in a gentle voice, “Will you join us now?”

I neither look nor answer. We slip into the cellar.

Farid takes one look at Zerubbabel and signals, “Its the Count of Almira.” As for Queen Esther, he isn’t so sure until I point out the choker of emeralds and sapphires which she always wears around her neck. “Yes, that’s her,” he gestures.

Swallowing hard, I think, an alchemy unanticipated by Uncle turnedthe love of these friends to fear. Then to hateand finally murder. For who could be more fearful than New Christians? Who more hateful than Portuguese and Spanish nobles? Who, then, better to betray Uncle than aristocratic former Jews helping him smuggle Hebrew books: Zerubbabel and Queen Esther!

Had something recently gone wrong between them? Tu Bisvat wrote that a safira sent by my master had not reached him. Maybe Dona Meneses had begun diverting profits intended for the purchase of new manuscripts. Or perhaps Uncle’s uncompromising judgments had begun to constrict Zerubbabel’s business dealings. Had he begun selling books elsewhere?

The villainous Haman, then, would be portrayed in Uncle’s newest Haggadah—the one stolen from our genizah—by the Count of Almira as an old man. His was the face my master had been looking for, the one he had told me he’d finally found just before Passover dinner.

And yet, if the Count was guilty, if he had wanted to silence Simon and the other threshing group members who might have known his identity, then why did he agree to take Diego to the hospital? To Farid, I signal, “We need to find the missing Haggadah as proof that the Count had Uncle murdered or killed him himself.”

“How?” he gestures.

“We’ll have to trap Dona Meneses and the Count somehow. They must have it.”

“Berekiah!” Reza calls suddenly. “You have a visitor…Father Carlos.”

Is this a trick designed by my mother to get me upstairs? “Send him down!” I call.

“Who is it?” Farid signals.

“The priest,” I answer.

I slip the Haggadah into its hiding place, lock the lid, then drop the genizah key into the eel bladder.

Father Carlos feels his way down the stairs. Sweat beads on his forehead and his breathing comes greedily, as if he’s been running.

“Judah?” I ask.

“Nothing.” He comes to me, takes my hands. In a quivering voice he says, “You must help me!”

“Is it the Northerner? Is he after you?!”

“No, no…not that. But dearest God. I was talking to the Dominicans… They must have summoned a demon to kill me. Berekiah, I’ve realized something—evil is jealous. The Devil wants to destroy what is most good. And your uncle had benevolent powers that healed both the Lower and Upper Realms. If the Devil had wanted… I think