The Turks sailed and prayed. Five times a day the renegadoes crouched beneath the billowing sails and spoke to their Adonai at Mecca. Starboard, larboard, toward bowsprit or rudder, as the direction of the ship changed, east moved about as if it were the sun in its orbit around the earth.
It would be another century before Copernicus had the seychl to say, “That’s a tall story you tell me, Ptolemy,” but for now, Sarah’s world was the centre of a sorry tale told by Turks and, except for the downward davening, it was much like being on any ship.
Except that these turbaned swabs treated her well.
“I will not eat,” she moaned, refusing the food that they brought on large brass platters. Yogurt, nuts, dried fruit, mutton and noodles instead of the usual shipboard salt goat. These Turkish sailors intended to keep her succulent—zaftik—for the Sultan or his princes. I’d seen the harem. It was a gold cage for birds with splendid plumage and quick brains. As long as you were happy inside such a cage, you were happy. And so if once or twice you had to shtup in the dark on a soft bed surrounded by perfume, silks and jewels …
So I’d help her escape. My sea-green maideleh.
To be imprisoned on a boat is to have the ocean for a jailer. We would have to wait until landfall.
I cannot read, least of all the stars, so I was unable to determine our position, but as the waves began to rise and the wind whinnied through the rigging, I could read the sails’ pages and knew they foretold storm.
The sailors motioned toward an indistinct ridge of land.
“Sicily,” they said.
The captain and quartermaster would not alter course for the island, one large pock out of Ferdinand’s many on the pimpled face of Europe. Instead the bo’sun called, “All hands ahoy! Tumble up here and take in sail.”
The clouds collected in dark scrolls. We were close-hauled on the wind, and nearly keeled over.
“Got in Himl,” I said. “Or wherever you are.”
The great hoofs of sea beat our bows like a meshugener shmid hammering at an anvil. The water shpritzing over the deck turned the crew into world champion shvitzers swimming through hell. The halyards had been let go, and the great sails filled out and backed against the masts. The wind shrayed through the rigging, loose ropes flew about. Orders were shouted from sailor to sailor.
“Tie the boom!”
“Seize the mainsheet!”
“Reef the mizzen tops’il, lad!”
A boychik of a sailor was ordered aloft the mizzen—to where I hid. He climbed and laid out on the yard with all his strength. As he did he vomited into the black sky and I saw his frightened-wide eyes look right at me. I climbed beyond the reach of his arm and his outpourings, higher up the mast, but the sharp whip of the wind lashed me and I was blown over the shuddering black back of the sea, far from Sarah, safe harbour, or solid things.
“An umglik!” I screamed. A disaster. “Gey kakn af der levoneh! Go shit on the moon!” I shouted.
Chapter Two
I thought the wind my true home, but carried by the banshee breath of the unbridled lost-its-mind middle sea I despaired of the touch of earth or gravity. Tree or silver cage, shoulder or floating corpse: I now wished for such hospitable heavens.
I was days in such windborne purgatory. Then I found myself blown over the shores of an island and able to fly into the protective maw of a cave and, thanks God, the howling finally ceased.
A great fire burned in the centre of the cave. It threw such writhing shadows as would cause Plato to kvell with pride at their form. There was a fragrance of cleft cedar and juniper. Roasting fruit and seed. A woman in long silks tended kebab skewers in the flames. I chaleshed for such food and I approached her. My storm-shaken brain was addled, for I was snatched and stuffed into a cage of wooden bars before I was able not to be snatched and stuffed into such a cage. A pale-skinned man in a dirty white kaftan grinned at me with an off-kilter, gold-toothed smile.
“Welcome,” he said from the free world outside the bars.
With a quick twist of her head, a woman tossed her long hair over her shoulders, walked over and kissed him. “You are quick, Strabo.”
The man looked directly at her. “There are many birds on the island, most, I’d expect, more succulent than this. If it speaks, it can be our companion. If not, our stew.”
He smiled his crooked smile and left, not, I hoped, with the intent of seeking a side dish.
I would not sing for my supper, but to avoid being someone else’s.
“I speak,” I said to the woman, somewhat self-evidently. “I hope that excludes me from the menu.”
She had turned toward the fire and did not respond.