A room filled with spider webs, broken furniture, worn carpets, barrels, clay jugs. Spider webs. Some old swords.
A door at the back that Moishe had difficulty opening. As he struggled, we heard the bells of Maundy Thursday begin to sound.
Tonight it was both Passover and Maundy Thursday’s Last Supper. It was either the devil never shites but he shites in buckets—or a good sign.
They would be holding mass in the churches, washing feet, and singing “Gloria.” We went to find the dining table to begin our own last supper, our secret seder.
We’d leave the door for another time.
So.
It was a few days after Passover, and Moses and Jesus were walking together, kibitzing about this and that, remembering their glory days in Biblical times.
They came to a sea.
“Hey, Yeshua, watch this,” Moses said. He raised his walking stick and parted the sea. “I still got it,” he said. “Just like parting my hair. If I still had hair.”
“Ok, then, Moe,” Jesus said. “I can top that.” And he strode out over the surface of the water, defying gravity and the physics of surface tension. Then suddenly, he began to sink. He swam to shore, spluttering.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “It used to be so easy.”
“That was before you had holes in your feet,” Moses replied.
We’d never seen such a meal. A Constantinople of food. A thousand succulent succubi threatening to make merry with our insides. A Red Sea of sauce. And soon, we’d arrive at the promised lamb.
In the centre of the table, long as a whale, bright flames surmounted two pairs of silver candlesticks that would be the prize of any pirate’s booty.
The chairs were arranged for us, pillows in place, so that we could lie back as was the custom. We were once slaves, now we can recline. At each place, there was set a splendid Haggadah, the prayer book outlining the service.
Even if I had been offered a chair and a pillow, takeh, would I have been able to lean back in comfort? The seder, the Haggadah, the practice of being a Jew. These things were forbidden. In Egypt, the Jews were slaves, but they were allowed to be Jews.
Around the table, Alonso and his wife. Alonso’s friend, jowly Isaac. An older man with a clipped white beard, introduced as Joshua. Two men in red cloaks both named Samuel. Let’s say First Samuel and Second Samuel. One dark man known as Jacob. Near him, a portly woman—though she more resembled ship than port—named Rebecca. A Leah. A Moses. A Daniel. More names than I could remember. All told, we were likely a Jesus-and-apostles’ worth of guests gathered for supper and scheming.
Presiding at the end of the table, Do?a Gracia.
She introduced Moishe. The Ashkenazi and his feathered shadow.
We began the seder. First we’d all be Moses and help the Jews scramble over the Red Sea, then onto Do?a Gracia’s boats. Boils and frogs and locusts would give us inspiration.
We recited prayers. We drank wine. We ate bitter herbs, eggs and salt water. The mortar of apples and nut, spread between two matzoh.
We arrived at the Four Questions—the questions about the seder traditionally asked, at least in the East, by the youngest child present. Mah nishtanah halailah hazeh. Why is this night different than all other nights?
“My bird,” Moishe said. “My bird will ask the questions.”
“And then he can find the cracker. The afikomen,” someone laughed.
So now I was a party trick, supposed to fly like an airborne mizinik—the family’s little tousle-headed tyke—to discover the hidden matzoh?
“Jews may appear as Christians. Muhammadans as Moriscos. There may be more in heaven and feathers than are dreamt of in our philosophy,” Do?a Gracia said. “Ofttimes in the cage, an unexpected sage. This bird may prove useful to us.”
“True,” said old Joshua. “As it says in Job, ‘the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee.’ So, old greybird, let’s begin with some questions.”
I managed to recite the first few lines before becoming fartshadet—confused. I knew much of Jewish things, but I had not been born to it. The others joined in and we asked the questions in chorus as was the Sephardi custom.
Joshua continued, leading the seder. We retold the Exodus story as he directed us, each taking turns with the telling. Even the fartshadeteh feygeleh, the befuddled bird, yours truly. As each of the ten plagues was mentioned, each person dipped a finger into his wine glass, and spilled individual drops like blood from the stone-cut palms of slaves. I dipped my beak, cut only by seeds and human words.
But we only got to the seventh plague—barad, hail—when some burly shtarkers burst through the door. Behind these oxen-browed air-suckers were two weasely-faced farshtunkeneh priests, plague-red droppings from the pestilent shvants of the church. There’s a way that actions can wear heavy boots even if the actors do not.