The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon by Richard Zimler Page A

shirtless man sweating like a miner began hacking with an axe at the body of an old woman splayed on the ground. First the left hand, then the right were severed. This last one bore a ring: the aquamarine of Senhora Rosa-monte , an elderly neighbor who always gave me lemons as presents. The axman was so lost in the joy of killing that he didn’t notice the gemstone. He laughed and shouted, “The ash of the Jews will make good fertilizer for our fields!” He tossed the Senhoras hands into the crowd. A cheer rose up, and I pushed after them. A pale and pimpled sailor from the north was now wearing the hand with the ring on his head, dancing, singing a drunken song in a language spurting up from his gut. When I faced him, he ceased his jig. I poured all my coins at his feet, pointed to his find. He nodded, spit out guttural words, tossed the hand high in the air, straight up toward the gulls. It fell, splattering blood. I snatched it up, sealed it in my pouch. From the granite steps of the Dominican Church, shouts in a voice of doom turned me: “Kill the heretics! Kill them now!” It was a squat, owl-eyed friar swathed in his robes of evil. Like a heraldic shield, he held a bloody Nazarene stick out to the crowd. Solomon the goldsmith was there, lying on the cobbles at the foot of the church steps. Belly up, bleeding like a wounded dog. As I stepped forward, he shouted my name, once clearly. Crimson ribbons streaked his white robe. Two grunting men soaked in sweat and blood were hitting him with planks of wood formed into Nazarene crosses and driven through with nails. Solomon, who caressed gold leaf into whispers from God. Solomon, who kissed me full on the lips and sobbed when he saw the illuminated Book of Esther I’d made for him. Solomon, who…
    It was hard work this killing. At each whack, spurts of life emerged from the goldsmith as if from fountains viewed from heaven. The ripped meat of his punctured hands was outstretched to make it stop. Screams. Hebrew screams for King Manuel. Now to Abraham, Moses. To God. “Make it stop! O God! Make it stop!” A gurgling blood from his mouth choked him.
    “Let’s shave the Jew before he dies!” one of the men shouted. Lifting a blazing branch from the pyre, he held it to Solomon’s gray beard, set it afire. The tortured goldsmith’s eyes were wide with pain, looking ferociously into the world for help.
    As if an arrow of heresy had split my mind, I was thinking: It is a failing of God that we cannot draw such physical pain away from another human being and make it our own.
    A hulking giant with a red cross painted on his forehead, carrying a rusty ax, suddenly came forward shouting for mercy and rain. With a great swing over his head, he sent the jagged blade crashing for Solomon’s neck. Life splattered as far as my feet and his ragged body collapsed like a dolls, his neck spurting blood like new wine from a cask.
    When I awoke to my own presence, Christian men were staring at me; it was idiocy, but in my horror, I had involuntarily begun to whisper prayers to myself in Hebrew!
    A hand caught me suddenly, tugged me back. Jerked me hard. A face I knew. David Moses? We ran through walls of reaching arms with the weightless speed of nightmare. Raced through a forest of movement . Around corners. Up stone staircases. Down shadowed alleys. Into a house. Through a closing door into welcoming darkness.
    A hand fell over my mouth. Breathing came hard against my cheek. A voice I knew was whispering my name. “Quiet, Beri,” he said.
    It was David Moses, our former chazan.
    “Master David, did you see Solomon, the goldsmith?” I asked.
    “I saw many of us,” he replied.
    “But Solomon. Did you see…”
    Shouts from just outside the door: “Down by the river! Let’s get going! Bring the cart!”
    Master David covered my mouth with his hand. We crouched down. Our breathing ebbed together, then separated.
    “Have you seen my family? My mother, Judah…”
    “No. But