The two of them held their heads and shielded their eyes against the daylight and the effects of wine. I sat on Moishe’s shoulder and closed my eyes.
A worn path through the rolling hills, the beaches and the steady breaking of the waves far below. We walked between dusty boulders and stunted trees, the only sounds the shuffle of their feet and the occasional bird. Then low murmuring, but, half asleep, I imagined it nothing but the rumble of Moishe’s belly.
We continued over a small rise and along a curving cliffside road.
“I was thinking …” Moishe began.
But then the unmistakeable scrape of a blade drawn from its scabbard. Three men jack-in-the-boxed from behind the rocks. A thin youth soon had a dagger across Columbus’s chicken neck. The older and thicker two stood in front of us. All were wrapped in rags.
“Money,” the one to the left said darkly. An orator, his demands were expressed with near-classical economy.
Moishe had nothing but the book tucked into his shoulderbag and one remaining silver piece sewn into his waistband, the other having being lost in the escape from the burning ship.
I had nothing but my keen wits, my good looks, and my treasure trove of many words.
Columbus, of course, had untold riches.
Just not yet.
I have not found ruffians to be at ease with the concept of IOUs.
It was not long before Columbus was on the ground, the knife ready to carve him into brisket.
One of the shtarkers held Moishe while the orator punched him in the kishkas, hoping, one assumes, to have him puke money.
I took this moment to attempt an old trick. A parrot, desirous of pecking-order dominance, doesn’t futz around with pecking. He stretches his wings wide and swoops clawfirst and topples the rival parrot.
The orator’s head, perched on his shoulders, would be the rival parrot.
I flew up and began my swoop.
If his head didn’t fall off, at least I’d make a nice borscht of his face.
“Avast!” the skinny thief warned and the thick thug let go of Moishe. Moishe slid the book from beneath his shirt and gave the pugilating orator a mighty klop on the head. It did not fall off, for it was attached like a dingleberry to the thick tuft of his neck, but the orator collapsed.
Then Moishe heaved the book over the cliff. “Money,” he yelled. The two standing gonifs, taking the bait, ran after the book as it fell toward the sea. I rerouted my attack and hit the skinny thief in the face. Moishe rushed forward and grabbed the knife. Columbus lay still on the ground like an uninhabited island awaiting discovery.
Moishe had boyhood experience playing catch-and-wrestle. And this time he had a knife. The kosher way to slaughter an animal is to slit its throat and let the blood run out. Moishe was the shochet and he had the skinny one ready to be turned to deli meat.
“Money,” Moishe said again, this time into the ear of the skinny youth, and I noted that his pronunciation was rapidly improving. Fear had already drained the blood from the youth’s face. He reached into his pocket and produced a small sack. We heard the muffled chinking of money.
“Money,” Moishe repeated with an ironic smile, tucking away the sack with his free hand. “If you want a job done right, you have to do it yourself,” he said, demonstrating casual mastery of the idiom.
By this time Columbus was on his feet. Moishe’s blade was still at the youth’s throat. Columbus put his face, with its sea blue eyes, close to the youth’s. “Go,” he said.
The single syllable was sufficient. Moishe removed the knife and the youth fled back along the road like a bullet trying to return to its gun.
Columbus said one more syllable, this time to Moishe.
“Thanks.”
Columbus owned little. Evidently, he had to be frugal, saving even his gratitude as we had saved his life.
Chapter Three
Moishe was learning of the world outside the shtetl: it was the fifteenth century. Bandits were expected roadside attractions. There were no signs that said, “Last mugging for twenty miles,” but du farshteyst, you get the idea. You couldn’t trust the eyes in the back of your head not to wink coquettishly at misfortune, once in awhile.
We resumed walking.
Moishe now had a chance to look back and be scared in retrospect at the rush of events. And though it had been unreadable, the worlds in its maps unreachable, Moishe mourned the loss of his father’s book. It had been a tangible memory, a written familiar from his past.
Ach, but he still had me. I might sometimes be a tosser, but I was untossable. I was a flying language guide for travellers, and as we plodded on, I continued to teach. I imagined myself like the chirping feygeleh that landed on Pope Gregory’s shoulder and whispered Gregorian chants in his infallible, pontifical ear.
Who knew what words they would use to offer this Polly a cracker, or a bite of a pretty zaftik morsel? But, nu, it’d certainly be in a language meant for Miguel and not Moishe.
Miguel would need to be ready.