“It is good. I should rest. I have been davening since … well, since before I was a Bar Mitzvah. And I’m tired … But it puts me together with my people. I am with them. And I am near to ha-Shem, the Almighty. He gives me strength for the day. Soon I will be yet nearer to him.
“It’s almost Passover and I expect you wonder Ma nishtanah halailah hazeh? ‘Why is this night different from all others, and why do I wear the tefillin and repeat the morning prayers?’ ”
“Yes, I …”
“Well, my boy, we are like slaves in Egypt but I am not certain that the Angel of Death will pass over us this time, and so I pray as if with each prayer, it is the morning of a new day. As the Mishnah says …”
I could tell that Rabbi Daniel had become half fardreyt—unmoored by waiting for the upcoming storm. How would I feel two days before my expected execution?
“Rabbi, we have the books that were in the Catedral. Do?a Gracia will help you and the others escape. There is a boat …”
“Shh. Boychik. Even Moses couldn’t free our people without ha-Shem. I remember …”
“But I have news to tell you. Abraham is dead.”
“Abraham?
“I killed him.”
“My boy …”
“He betrayed you. All of you. And Sarah. He—”
“Only ha-Shem can take vengeance. The Lord came down when Samson sought revenge for the loss of his eyes … And though Abraham died with both eyes, the Mishnah says, ‘Whoever destroys a single life is as guilty as though he had destroyed the entire world; and whoever rescues a single life earns as much merit as though he had rescued the entire world.’ But it is not a matter of simple mathematics, one eye given for another taken. I recall that in Leviticus …”
There was a voice from the front of the church.
“Shh, Rabbi,” Moishe hissed. “They’re coming.”
The rabbi retreated into the darkness of the cell and began again to murmur prayers.
Moishe squeezed against the stone wall. We willed ourselves to be stone. I may have been the dot of a vowel, but I did my best to be both silent and invisible.
Torchlight flickered along the path. We were hidden from its illumination by a buttress.
“Anyone there?” the guard’s voice said.
As if “anyone” would answer.
I wanted to say, “I’m not just anyone,” but even a worthy line isn’t worth death. I’d prefer my famous last words to be occasioned by my imminent and inevitable demise, not the cause of it.
I knew Moishe had expected a hero’s welcome, a verbal parade in celebration of his execution of Abraham and not the Mishnah-mad ravings of a farmishteh Rabbi.
And an eight-pounder broadside of a kiss from Sarah.
The guard retreated with his light. We’d have to be even more careful. And quick.
Moishe slithered along the church-side in pursuit of a gun port behind which was the flash of Sarah.
She was curled in the straw of the corner. A seahorse, a foal.
“Sarah,” Moishe whispered. “The guards are close. I must speak low if I speak.”
She came to the space between stones. “You must go. It is too dangerous.”
“Yes. But first …” He began to tell her about Abraham, but then stopped. Abraham, though he had betrayed her, had been her uncle.
This was not a time for more grief. Grief over betrayal. Over family. Over death.
“I will help you. I have a plan. I have arranged—Do?a Gracia has arranged—your escape from Spain. Soon you will be sailing toward Africa.”
“Disgraced. An orphan,” Sarah said. “Alone.”
“But I will help you,” Moishe said. “I will protect you. I am also an orphan. We are bashert. Destined. Let us … let us be farknast. Betrothed.”
She reached her hand toward Moishe. Their fingertips touched. A pretty rondeau composed suddenly in the crenelated castle of Moishe’s excited brain.
But it was interrupted. Torchlight and the return of the guard’s voice. Footsteps.
Moishe withdrew his hand. Turned. Ran into the shadows of dark trees. I flew above him, into the shadows of branches. The guards’ voices calling. Moishe clambering over a short fence and into some kind of shit dreck.
“Ech! Der oylem is a goylem. The world is stupid,” he muttered.
“Like Noah said to Mrs. Noah as the rain began, ‘this is no time to worry about your shoes,’ ” I said. “Now, drey zich. Keep moving!”
We went at full speed down the street, turning again into an alley.
We waited. In darkness, Moishe’s quick breath. Beside it, the smaller gusts of a parrot’s breath, my plum-sized lungs.
He inhaled. Held his breath. Listened.
Voices and footfalls. Becoming distant.
Breathing again. Running again.
Across a wide street, along an alley of tanners’ shops. We waded through the pungent tang in the dimness, Moishe careful to keep his footfall light, to look behind him. Down wide steps, a left turn, the roof of our goal. We’d soon be safe in our bed, ready to dream of the Promised Land and our Sarahs.
Then, from the shadows, a shtarker, a tough, wearing a dark robe, long sword still sheathed in its scabbard. He stepped into the middle of the alley and looked at us.
What else was there to look at, the scenery?
He drew the sword.