The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon

clarity to his final moment?

Is this, then, a forgery scripted by Zerubbabel and Queen Esther? Do they suspect that I am walking within their shadows?

“How long had he been dead when his sister found him?” I signal to Farid.

“She said she found him this morning. But the note only just now. She hadn’t the strength to go through his possessions any sooner.”

“What are you two signalling about?” Carlos demands. “And what’s it say, damn you?!”

After I read Solomon’s words aloud, Farid takes the note from me and sniffs at it, licks its edge. “Very cheap quality,” he says.

“As a mohel, Solomon was very skillful with knives,” Carlos observes.

“It might explain things,” Diego adds. “We certainly never suspected he was working with Master Abraham. That’s just the way they both would have wanted it.”

He’s right. And yet, could Gemila have mistaken a balding, olive-skinned finch of a man for White Maimon of the Two Mouths? And for what reason would he have hired a Northerner to kill Simon and Diego?

“You have opened another gate,” I hear Uncle tell me. “Now, Berekiah, fill your lungs with the breath of the Lower Realms and jump through before it has a chance to bang closed.”

I take the letter back from Farid. My pounding feet lead me to the cellar so that I can meditate upon its script. “Alone,” I whisper, and Farid lets my hand slide from his.

Downstairs, I take Uncle’s topaz signet ring from the storage cabinet and slip it onto my right index finger. I sit on our prayer mat above his bloodstains. After opening the doors of my mind with patterned breathing exercises, I transpose the scripted letters of Solomon’s note using the monotone of chant. When his words lift from the paper and twist like a juggler’s rings in the air, they shed their meaning as unnecessary weight. My arms and legs grow light with grace.

Imagine looking upon a cuneiform tablet. When the knots of mind are untied, Hebrew becomes that foreign. The letters reveal themselves as dismembered shapes; music without melody; animals unnamed by Adam. The solidity of the world grows translucent and finally opens.

Through the largest God-given space—the one of emptiness beyond thought—words with the certainty of prayer come to me: This must be the scriptof Uncle’s killer;it is his confession,not Solomons. He left it in the mohel’s house after his suicide. For his sister or someone else to find and bring to me…totempt me away from his trail.

Perhaps he even killed poor Solomon to advance his plans in some way!

I sit alone, exhausted; the effort to summon insight has been costly for my weakened body. My hands are weighted as if by lead. Rest tilldawn,I think to myself. In response, my eyelids close. My uncle speaks to me. “Sleep,” he says, his voice plaintive, seductive. “You need to slumber in silence if you are to complete the journey.”

“No, not now,” I answer aloud. Opening my eyes, I think: I must check Solomon’s apartment,talk to his sister. Then go back to the Estaus Palace. I must try to speak to Joanna,the Count’s daughter.

“As defiant as ever,” Uncle replies. I close my eyes to see his smile. “You must give way to dream,” he continues. “The desert of Lisbon has passed beneath your feet. You are indeed close. Rest your head upon my lap. Use your dreams to ask a question.”

“Is that not a sin?” I ask. “One must not question the dead, the prophets say.”

“One may always speak with God. It is within his ocean that this single drop now resides. Simply take the ribbon with both our names scripted in gold from your wrist and place it over your eyes. Then sleep.”

I obey my master. And a dream does indeed descend.

I am enfolded by a warmth akin to homecoming. My master is standing above me, framed by the tiles of the cellar wall, his prayer shawl draped over his head and shoulders.

“I do not believe that Dom Miguel Ribeiro or any Northern henchman in the pay of your secret smugglers would have planted a silk thread on your thumbnail or killed like a shohet,” I say. “So who else is involved? Who did Queen Esther send to murder you?”

“You already know who separated my body from my soul,” he replies with a cagey smile. “The question is ‘where’ and ‘when’ you shall realize it.”

“As usual, Uncle, you want to make me work for an answer. Very well. Where and when shall I learn his name?”

As the white wing of his robe unfurls, a breeze scented with myrtle blows over us. The ceiling thins and fades. Walls drop away. The sky opens, is washed pink and violet at the western horizon. We sit together below the tower of the Almond Farm.

“Why here?” I ask. “Why at sundown?”

Uncle shows me his piercing look meant to indicate that I must listen closely. He raises his hand of blessing over me and says, “The map of a town is in a blind beggars feet.”

Golden light shines through the eyelets of windows at the northern rim of the cellar ceiling. It is Saturday morning. The eighth and last day of Passover. I sit up and gaze back at my dream as if upon a departing guest. Opening the genizah, I search in vain for handwriting that matches that of Solomon’s bogus note. Then, just to be sure of my reasoning, I page through Uncle’s personal Haggadah. Solomon the mohel was not given a Biblical cognate. In all likelihood, he could not have been involved in smuggling books with Zerubbabel and Queen Esther.

Upstairs, Reza is building a fire in the hearth, Aviboa in her arms, balanced on her hip. A plump orange marigold is pinned in the girl’s hair. Diego and Carlos sit across from each other at the kitchen table sipping steaming barley water from ceramic cups.

Reza is the first to turn to me. Her eyes betray the grudge she carries for my not leading Sabbath services the night before.

“You’ve slept,” Carlos says. “That is good.”

We exchange blessings. “Where’s Farid?” I ask.

“At home, saying prayers,” Diego replies.

I make for the door to the courtyard.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Father Carlos demands.

“Out,” I reply.

“You’re going to Solomon the mohel’s apartment, aren’t you?” Reza asks bitterly. Before I can tell her my true destination, she says, “Can’t you just let it be? He’s dead. We have our vengeance. So now we must find a way to move on, to care for the family we still have. That’s what your master would want. And believe me, Berekiah Zarco, there’s a boatload of chores for you to do should you ever want to rejoin the living!”

Reza stares at me as if I’d better give her the response she wants.

“My path is not yours,” I tell her. “If I don’t proceed on my own now, I’ll never be able to rejoin you later.” The destination she has chosen for me serves as a convenient lie, however, so I add, “Besides, I’m only going there to pay my respects. Even a murderer deserves our prayers.”

Diego stands and says, “I’ll be leaving this evening for Faro and the boat to Constantinople. Perhaps we should say our goodbyes.”

“I’ll be back soon. No time for farewells just yet.”

Farid is praying in his front room when I enter his house. When he spots me, he lifts straight up as if reeled in by the hands of Allah.

Chapter XIX

As Farid and I spire up the hillside of mottled scrub toward the towers of the Graca Convent and morning sun of Lisbon, the dwarf nun with the single saber-tooth who guards the sanctuary’s limestone cross swivels around