After you’ve had a bite.
Some conversos were hidden Jews, Marranos, crypto-Jews, practising their faith in secret. The Jewishness that dare not speak its name. They lit Shabbos candles in cupboards, shared Passover meals in cellars, whispered blessings as they walked through doors. Studied the Talmud and davened from prayerbooks late in the night. Hebrew books, Jewish books were treyfeneh bicher: verboten.
“So, Migueleh,” the reb said. “We want you to shlepp some books to the secret Jews in Seville. But no one can know. It would be fatal. Farshteyst? You understand?”
Moishe nodded.
“But you’re not a Jew. You’re a goyisher sailor from Lithuania. You were almost sold at port but you escaped.”
No so far from the truth.
“Besides, what do they know from Ashkenaz?” the reb shrugged.
“You’ll have a horse, something to nosh, a letter of introduction, and a small sword,” the mapmaker said in Portuguese. “You’ll be paid, enough. There are those—like Reb Isaac Abravanel, the treasurer to King Alonso—who have the money to support such things.”
“And if there’s trouble, maybe you’ll let your parrot do the talking,” Bartholomeo said. “As far as I know, there is no Inquisition for birds.”
“At least not yet,” the reb said. I said nothing, but wondered, nu, what’s the right word for snatching parrots like feathered fruit from their perches in Africa?
Your new life, a procession of cages, jesses, clipped wings, and exile.
Starved and poked until you speak the language of those who did it.
Converso parrots singing our Lord’s song in a strange land.
But, as they say, there’s job security.
And, after awhile, the words we spit in rage are the words of those we rail against.
Feh.
Eventually, all that’s left is words.
Chapter Six
A day later we gathered our few things in both sack and saddlebag, and shtupped our pockets full with bread and dried fruit.
“Boychik,” the old rebbe wheezed. “Sit.” The rebbe put his shaky spiderweb fingers on Moishe’s shoulder. “There’s news.”
The story had travelled west, through a network of Jewish learning and trade, taking many months to arrive on this furthest European shore.
There had been pogroms in the distant east. The east which had been Moishe’s home. Shtetls had been plundered then torched. Jews raped then killed.
Cossacks like pirates boarding the landlocked villages.
Moishe’s shtetl. Was it on the banks of the Neve?is near Panevezys?
Ash. Chickens. Lost and baleful dogs.
No one survived.
His parents?
Ha-Shem yikom damo. May Elohim avenge their blood.
It was a week along the road to Seville, a connect-the-dots route of small villages drawn together by dirt roads, scattered stones, and an assortment of travellers. The thought of his parents burned in Moishe.
“They were the centre of the compass. Where I was travelling from. What do I have left—an accent and a memory of my father’s book?”
Moishe described a shul ceremony. On the bima, the dais, the Torah was passed hand to hand and embraced from dor l’dor, generation to generation. He recalled his father telling him that Jews were “the people of the book”—books were akin to blood, something that allowed them to live forever.
“So what did I do? Pitched my father’s book into the sea. Zay gezunt, eternal life. Hey, sea cucumbers and shiksa mermaids, here’s all you need. I might as well have dropped my parents into the sea. Never mind eternal life, they have no life and where was I?”
Near Andalusian territory, a shlemiel with a stringy beard stood by the side of the road and invited us to kick his tuches for the price of a few small coins. I suspect he was often compelled to give away his service for free. We stayed overnight in a selection of inns or, to tell the emes truth, in their barns. Each night, after an evening observing the rich variety of human knots becoming unravelled at the inn, we found our way to the sweet scuttling of the barns. Sometimes there were others there: a variety of the bedless and transient, those shlumpers left trailing behind the promise of their own better futures. I encountered no other parrots, but we’re not usually companions for those bound inland, unless they’re buoyed by the jewelled palanquin of privilege and can afford feathered marvels.
Moishe paid with Don Abravanel’s coins, never allowing more than one to be visible at a time. He kept some in his shoes, some strapped to his leg, some beside his own family jewels.
Outside the city, with the sun still seeping like a wound over the Andalusian mountains, we came across what we thought to be a festival procession, loud with bright colour and the wailing, singing and shouting of thousands. Enormous crosses held high, a parade of priests, monks, and the powerful riding in carriages and on huge horses dressed in silks and resembling cantering four-poster beds.