Gevalt. I hoped his limbs had not also become the tsimmes of sharks, that he had not become—in whole or in part—a settler of whales, a belly dweller. I scoured the sea for signs. Of the barrel. Of Moishe. For well-fed sharks and their trail of blood. Gotenyu, I did not want to be rent from him, my only mishpocheh.
The wind, lost for so long in wandering, now huffed boisterously. The waves surged through the kelpy waters, the seaweed and slime of the sea stirred in a frothing borscht. The ocean’s tiger heart had woken, the waters began to leap and prowl.
The chutzpah.
Not a single purr for weeks and then this roar?
And then—vo den, what did you expect?—the rain.
Black skies. Lightning. Thunder.
I was not compelled to follow any route except toward Moishe. So, nu. I went with the wind.
My kishkas became quoggy in the deluge. And the inside of my kishkas? Archipelagos of guano. I flew between the blue fissures of lightning as it cracked the grim sky.
S’iz shver tsu zayn a Yid. It’s tough to be a Jew.
Tougher still when such storm threatens to make barbecue of one’s mortal pork. And then I spied the hogshead. A shtik naches! O hetskeh zich! I shook with joy.
Moishe?
I saw a hand emerging from the bunghole, the pale coxcomb fingers of a squid. I became a barrel-rider as I landed, the cask bucking in the breakers.
“Moishe!” I called, though both my words and myself were near drowned in the gale. “Vi geyt dir? How’s tricks?”
The fingers curled, the hand turned, then grabbed me and pulled me in.
It was dark inside the barrel. There was the heavy breathing of a cave bear.
“I like what you’ve done with the place,” I said.
“Baklog zich nisht. Don’t complain,” he said. “I tried decorating the sea. It’s more difficult.”
Water sloshed in through the hole, the spouting of an inverse whale. Moishe repositioned himself. “The cork is gone. I use my knee. But it’s dukedom enough, since I’m pickled in Madeira wine.”
Moishe and I in a barrel. What would you do?
Of course we spoke of metaphysics. We had the time.
Feh.
We spoke of nothing, a nothing that didn’t include philosophy unless one considers the chaloshesdikeh heaving sickness-unto-death for we were thrown up and then down. Or possibly in another direction. But not at the same time. One part of my kishkas went left, another right. The rest attempted escape velocity. The only philosophy was to wait and endure.
We were tossed about like casks lobbed out of the Ark. The washed world’s first trash. How long did this tempest last? Who knew? Night and day cast the same shadows in our dark cave.
But then, up and down ceased to be our world. The storm stilled and, like the captain of the Nightingale in the song, we smelled flowers.
We were near land.
I was about to stick my head through the bunghole, a parrotscope surveying the antediluvian sea, but our ark received a mighty wallop. I was worried that we might be stoved in like the Kabbalists’ vessels, emanating Moishe, his bird, piss-diluted wine and darkness. But the barrel did not break. It was only the lid that was dislodged. Seawater flooded in. We spluttered to the surface.
We had run into the hull of a ship. There could be few boats in this part of the sea though all must be pulled by the same tide. Sha. Not fate. The Antilles current. Or perhaps the search for the same spoils.
A sailor looked over the gunwales.
“Avast, man off the larboard side.”
“An Indian in a canoe?”
“A pale sea cucumber. With a bird.”
“Marooned?”
“Haul in this strange fish and we shall talk turkey.”
And so a ropeladder was lowered that Moishe attempted to climb. But his strength was gone. Instead, he hung like a netted crab and the sailors hove him onto the deck.
“I’faith! This sailor is known to me.” The man in a cassock seemed to have some authority. He regarded Moishe with interest and spoke loudly, as if Moishe truly had the brains of a fish. “Once he saved me as I have now saved him. Sometime physician Miguel, do you know me?”
It was Columbus.
Gevalt.
Of course he found us. He was the great explorer, discoverer of what was already there.
In this case, us.
But we were pleased to be found and given a good Spanish nosh and clear, fresh drink. A little luck to go along with my handsome, brine-logged feathers.
After a few days of aboard-ship rest, Moishe recovered. We dined in the captain’s cabin with the Admiral of the Ocean Seen and the Viceroy of Visions, for now, Columbus himself had been found.
“For eight days,” he told us, “I was lost and despaired of hope. The sea chopped and frothed with a rage I had never known.”