The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon by Richard Zimler

through the Horse’s Well Gate, I recalled the metallic shiver the gates to the Judiaria Pequena made when the Old Christian guards locked the Jews inside for the night. A shout from above turned us. Our former rabbi, Fernando Losa, was waving at us to wait from the top of the Synagogue Steps. He’d become a dealer in religious Christian garments since the conversion, outfitted even the Bishop of Lisbon, may his tongue turn to powder. “Oh no, not Rabbi Losa,” I moaned. “For what terrible sin are we being made to atone?”
    Uncle laughed. A woman suddenly shrieked, “Water!” and we pressed against the wall as a rain of waste cascaded from her third-story window.
    Losa joined us puffing for breath, an exquisite scarlet cloak embroidered with a collar of pearls draped over his narrow shoulders. Thin and beak nosed, with deep-set treacherous eyes, a shiny bald head and a frowning slit for a mouth, he looked to me like a vulturine golem constructed for hunting down subterranean rodents. As a boy, I expected him to have talons rather than fingers, and in my dreams, he neverspoke, always hissed. “Those wretched, filthy cows are everywhere!” he said now in a false, patrician voice.
    “At least they’re kosher,” my master noted.
    Rabbi Losa sneered and said, “This bad fortune of Diego the printer ’s is what comes from talking to you about the fountain, you know.” He was referring in code to the kabbalah; it was no secret to him that Uncle wanted Diego to join his threshing circle.
    My master made a deferential bow and whispered in Hebrew, “ Hakham mufla ve-rav rabanan, you are a great scholar and a rabbi of rabbis.” He glanced at me to be sure I’d catch his play on words; he was insulting Losa by accenting the letters h, a, m, and r. Together, they formed the Hebrew word for jackass.
    Uncle turned to leave, but the rabbi said, “Wait one moment!” He licked his lips as if savoring a tasty sauce. “I’ve come to give you a warning . Eurico Damas says that should you ever so much as whisper his name in your sleep, he’ll chop you up and serve you inside sausage casing. Best keep your beak out of private affairs, little man!”
    My heart sank; Damas was a New Christian arms dealer who’d won contracts from the King for spying on his former brethren and who had recently taken a child bride. Two weeks ago, Uncle had barged in on a secret meeting of the Jewish court and demanded to have him judged for drowning the newborn infant of a flower seller he’d raped and refused to marry. The investigation ended a week ago, when the flower seller herself mysteriously disappeared. Uncle’s name was to have been kept secret by the rabbinical court, but apparently someone—probably Losa himself—had given it to Damas.
    “Is that all you came to tell me?” my master demanded.
    “That should be quite enough. If it weren’t for my intervention, he’d have come himself.”
    “Many thanks, oh great scholar and rabbi of rabbis,” Uncle answered with an ironic bow.
    Losa pulled in his chin like a hen, watched us leave with the bitter but patient air of a man who has lost the battle but will continue to wage the war.
    As we rushed toward the city center and the hospital, I daydreamed about protecting my master from a succession of kabbalistic demons and Biblical giants. Perhaps I’d never outgrow such fantasies. And yet, passing the clamor of Lisbon’s great fishmarket and port, they seemedsuddenly fitting. After all, Uncle had sworn protection over me as a boy in order to take over my mystical guidance. Did it imply a reciprocal promise I’d never before realized?
     
    When we explained our mission to a bailiff at the All Saints Hospital, he informed us proudly that the nobleman who had brought Diego in had been none other than the Count of Almira. The name meant nothing to me, but I wrote it in gold in my Torah memory because of my attraction for his traveling companion. A girlish nun escorted us to