Shlomo sprung up and plunged his rigging knife toward the leather-and-brimstone body of Jacome. Moishe, who had said nothing, appeared to be drifting keellessly on an inner sea, but his hand shot out and caught Shlomo’s arm and twisted it until it clicked like the chambers of a lock. At the same time, he kicked Shlomo’s skinny legs out from under him. Shlomo slammed onto the deck. Moishe leapt up and held up his open hand before Jacome’s scowling jowls.
“Be a mensch. Each day brings forth its own sorrows,” he said, then walked over to the starboard gunwales to look out at the skiffling waves. Shlomo righted himself and sat by the barrel where he remained silent, examining the suddenly intriguing details of his own feet. Jacome glowered at the mizzen, but also said nothing.
Eventually Moishe returned to the others. “I remember the map and the island well: it resembles a tuches sticking out of the sea. And the books are buried in its valley, nu? We do not know where we are on this map—which makes it both simple and difficult to go forward. But I shall chart a course toward where this island might be. Not for nothing, my years davening over maps. I’ve been to the shvitz house and I’d recognize this rumpy atoll anywhere: it’s like the mountainous spotted hiney of my old cheder teacher. But, af an emes, less hairy.”
Later, we unrolled the map in the captain’s quarters. Moishe had asked Shlomo and Ham to make up the morning watch. Jacome, Samuel, Isaac and Yahíma gathered around the captain’s table as if we were dissecting a body.
Moishe navigated around the map. There was an island with soundings, cliffs, rivers, bays and inlets clearly indicated, and every particular that would be needed to bring a ship to safe anchorage upon its shores. It was more-or-less apple-shaped, about three leagues across, and had a sheyneh fine natural harbour where we could drop anchor. There were, as Moishe had remembered, two enticingly zaftik hills, like the twin kneydlach of a rotund tuches, which dominated the island. They were farprishtcht-poxed by three marks in red ink: one on the north part of the island, two in the southwest. Moishe explained that they were Hebrew letters. Hey. Vav. Hey. In a valley in the centre of this triangle was a small, neat letter yud written in the same red ink. Buried beneath it: the books.
On the back of the map, the same hand had written this further information:
Tall tree, south of the valley, top o’ the left hill. Bearing a point to the N. of N.N.E.
Ten feet.
Follow the trend of the east hummock, ten fathoms south of the black crag with the face on it.
Once we had found the island and located the valley, we would know where to go. The tree must be the yud. We wouldn’t have to ask directions from indigenous birds, rodents, snakes, or the yenta know-it-all trees and their smug, trembling little leaves.
But first we had to find the island.
“See how the current flows between—vos?—these two-bit isles, they look like gallstones.”
“A rebbe in my shtetl had moles shaped just like them.”
“Of course, but af an emes, less hairy.”
“Actually, if you want to know, he had more hairs than most Jews have tsuris.”
“I don’t—and I especially don’t want to know where he had such troubles.”
We would sail north looking for landmarks, for the distinct mole-shaped stippling of islands on either side of our passage. And the tuches would stand out plain as the undercarriage of stars.
Chapter Six
An African Grey–coloured dawn, a crimson feathering near the starboard horizon. The ship sighed as the men shloffed, the breeze scuffling through the sails. Moishe stood in the bow, willing the island to appear in the ghostly translucence.
A sound like stones dropping. He turned and squinted starboard. A dark shape on dark water. The slow movement of shadowy wings or fins swimming close to the surface. The ship’s skiff in the distance, rowing away. The undulation of long, tar-black hair. Further away, the obsidian silhouette of an island and the orange glow of bonfire.
“A broch,” Moishe said. “Each day brings forth its own sorrows.”
I stood on his ragged left shoulder. It remained steady though tears rolled steadily into the thicket of his beard. “I do not want to leave the world, but it seems my world wants to leave me.”
Then: “Aaron, I’m glad you’re here.”
We watched as Yahíma rowed toward shore.
“I wish that we, too, could leave this meiskeit-ugly bloodletting. That we, too, could silently row out of this story and find another one, a story where more blood stayed in the body. Sha. I’m only looking for this treasure, these books, this poxy fountain, because, like a shlemiel, I still believe—keneynehoreh—in life instead of death. But, takeh, it’d be easier to be dead.
“Such pain: my parents. Spain and all those I knew there and those I didn’t. Sarah, with whom I thought I could stay young and love forever. And now this new world and Los Indios. This bellyful of spears and eyes rubbed with pepper. I don’t want to forget. But I also don’t want to remember.