Moishe had saved Columbus’s life. He had mined the thief’s money sack from its youthful source. Yet, somehow, Columbus assumed the role of captain. As if it were as natural as his haughty self-absorption and blinkless faith in himself. As if he had not been born wet and slippery, but was from some other place. A place where the worth and fame of his future deeds were assured.
Moishe put the money on the table and Columbus pushed the coins toward the man. A game of checkerless checkers. The man promptly lifted the silver and stowed it in a pocket of his embroidered waistcoat with a small twitch of a smile.
We were to ride two mules to Lisbon.
Chapter Four
The scrawny boy stood smartly at attention as Red Feather strode from the inn door, his boots billowing small clouds of dust with each imperious step. A few curt orders and the boy began untying the mules.
Columbus, with the air of a grand knight setting out on a grail quest, took the reins and mounted the mule as if it were a great stallion.
Moishe climbed aboard his mule as if clambering out a window. He had no experience with great horses, but his father’s swayback carthorse was like an old and simple uncle to him and Moishe had taken joyrides about the yard on its rickety back.
We set out along the road to Lisbon. Moishe, the mule and I—mule surmounted by youth surmounted by parrot—resembling the fabled Musicians of Bremen, that motley vertical parade-across-species.
By late afternoon, we saw the broad blue expanse of the Tagus River as it widened into a virtual inland sea before flowing into the ocean. I remembered a fado marinheiro sung by a sailor intoxicated with nostalgia and loss, a feeling the Portuguese call saudade. “My hair is getting white, but the Tagus is always young,” he sang. And, ach, the sadness and wonder at witnessing a great river opening out into the sea. The current flowing purposefully forward, the always-young river suddenly lost in the endless, bankless vastness of the directionless sea, the stories of the lands that border the river diluted like so much salt.
Soon the lanky towers of the royal palace, the Alcá?ova Castle, rose above the city.
Gotenyu, Moishe was gobsmacked. He’d never seen a city of such vastness.
Me, I’d travelled the sea from fort to raft and had seen much. Still, there is that excitement that builds at the approach of a city. The great hive buzzes with its citizens, the energizing mix of honey, work, romance, shtupping, horse dung and thieves.
The Tagus was filled with grand ships leaving, returning, bringing news of new regions of Africa, bringing gold, spices, textiles and slaves.
You know what they say about being a slave: it’s a terrible job, but at least you have job security.
We entered the city proper, guiding our mules through streets filled with a chaos of traffic. Then Columbus stopped. He began explaining to Moishe how to find his brother’s shop.
“You will travel elsewhere?” Moishe asked.
Columbus had a speech ready, in case history were listening.
“Convey my affectionate greetings and regrets to my brother. Though born a weaver’s son, I would be a man of the greater world and, by Jesu, have been granted this chance. Today, I trade weft for wharf and warp for wave. The gentleman met in the Dom Venéreo Inn has a brother who requires mariners for Iceland and Africa. He who wishes to find his way through the labyrinth of the western seas must first learn the winds of the whale roads and the warm waters of Africa. We sail this same day and so you must present yourself before Bartolomeo with this message: you will help him with his maps in my stead. Perhaps together you will chart the new lands I will find.”
And with that, Columbus turned down an alley and was gone.
We were marooned in the great ocean of the city with nothing but a mule and the empty net of Columbus’s words.
A shaynem dank dir in pupik, as they say. Many thanks to your belly button. Thanks for nothing.
Perhaps not exactly nothing. Mapless, Moishe had travelled in search of maps and those who read them. From the narrow river of his birth, he would soon enter a larger sea. And, takeh, it’s true: what was unmapped for Moishe was maps.
Maps did not lead one to navigate with the eyes only. Reading maps led to following them. Before long, you wanted to be aboard that tiny caravel inscribed on the goatskin sea, blown by the favourable winds of commerce and curiosity, looking with a miniscule telescope at the islands of ink and the monsters that swam about the vague shores beyond.
And the roots of mountains, friable with gold.
Whatever the path, maps led to mariners.
Columbus’s brother, Bartolemeo Colon, lived and worked in a small building bordering on the Jewish quarter of Lisbon. A dun-coloured globe hung from a gibbet sticking out above the door.
A knock and then we were inside the dim room cluttered with books and charts both rolled and laid flat, piled on shelves, tables and the floor. A white-bearded, bent-backed ancient was stooped as if davening—praying—before a large map, dipping the dried-out hook of his nose into the ocean of parchment.