The storm swept away the last of my companions. The Minyan was down to one. One Jew, one God, one Florida. I hate to say I was happy, but I am a monogamist at heart.
“All Jews dead?” I asked Hanni.
“Yes.”
“Except Esau?”
“Of course.”
“Very convenient. Kill off all your witnesses with Hurricane Jehovah. Very Moby Dick.
“Moby Dick was a whale.”
“It’s still deus ex machina. Automatic and unsatisfying.”
“It’s what happened,” Hanni said. “I thought you were the stickler for authenticity. Do you want Esau to give Queequeg CPR just to satisfy your literary tastes?”
I turned back to the letter.
I was hungry. Hungrier than I’d been in the cave, hungrier than during the hundreds of pointless fasts I’d endured as a Jew and a friar. Hungrier than I’d been since my bar mitzvah. Along with my friends went my food. And among the many books that Santángel left me, among the many lessons that Abbas and Zacuto taught me, those on “How to Catch a Fish” or “How to Make a Fire from a Stone” or “How to Tell the Edible Mushroom from the One That Will Turn Your Tongue Black and Choke You to Death” were conspicuously absent.
I had cowered on the same small square of sand since our arrival. It had brought only misfortune. I turned my back to the beach and walked inland. Half an hour later I was at the shore, another shore. Another island? Could my dream have been so misaligned that what I had thought was solid breast was merely another lactic mirage? In the distance, beneath the afternoon sun, more land rose from the haze, a mile, perhaps half a mile, away. More broad-leaved trees, more sand. I was on a reef, maybe only an accident of the storm. I turned to the north and began walking. I hadn’t gone far when I heard the first pahk. I stopped in my
“There’s a gap here,” I said.
“There always is. Keep reading.”
beyond the huts came another pahk and then a loud grunt, as if a small crowd of people had been slapped on the
“Hanni!” I complained.
“I was beginning to like you, Holland,” she said, shifting on the pillows. “Don’t be such a whiny little girl.”
I couldn’t tell whether it was ceremony or entertainment, war or game. There was a ball. There was a stick. Can you remember, Eliphaz, the first time I took you out to the Ball Game, the wonder, the mystery, the feeling that the intricate rules and rituals were only steps in a path toward losing yourself in the rhythm of the game. That was how I felt, son, lying on my stomach in the sand, peering between the stilts of the hut, the backs of two braves only a few feet
a crack, as the stick hit the ball, the sound of sap bursting in fire, of a spear shattering against the shoulder of a twelve-pointed buck, of breaking bones, of my grandmother quartering a chicken against the sharp edge of the Fountain of the Lions. I jumped up and ran, knowing that the ball might clear the roof of the hut, watching it white against the blue of the sky, then coming down, down, so wrapped up in the game that I gave no thought to whether to hide or to catch, but held my palms up, wanting desperately to be part of the game.
When I opened my eyes, my hands were full. And two braves stood before me, mouths open, terror and gratitude both mixed
on their shoulders into the midst
the Calusa beaten, gathered up their
then, that I opened my hands and found, staring up at me—I know you will find it hard to believe that your people were once so cruel—the rounded, ball-shaped, sun-bleached skull of a baby
I looked up from the page. Hanni was beaming, munching away at a kipferln.
“Do you want a translation?”
“A paper bag would help.”
“Anthropologists have dug up hundreds of these skulls in burial grounds all over the South, scarred and dented from repeated blows. They’ve condemned the aboriginal American for murdering defective infants, unwanted babies, et cetera.”
“Esau’s description is rather horrifying,” I said.
“But think for a moment—what if these babies had died of natural causes, miscarriages, stillbirths, prehistoric Sudden Infant Death Syndrome? What if the holiest use you could make of your child’s remains was in your holiest ritual?”
“A ball game was a holy ritual?”
“Have you ever been to a baseball game?”
“No,” I had to admit.
“Keep reading,” she said. “It gets easier.”
I was brought onto the platform of one hut, larger than the rest. The braves, Eliphaz, set me down in front of their father, another Santángel, another Pinzón. I understood by their gestures that they were giving the chief a step-by-step reenactment of how I had risen out of the reeds, the savior of the game against the Calusa. The whole tribe had gathered around, only about thirty people then. You notice that, fifteen years later, people who have never seen me still stare. The excitement of the Mayaimi the first time they saw me was almost enough to drown out the voices of your uncles.
Then silence fell as they turned to me. I was expected to explain how I happened to fall from the sky to catch the skull at the end of the game, two braves out, every base occupied by a grinning Calusa, the winning run standing stick in hand before the lodge. I mimed as best I could the voyage across the water, the storm, the disappearance of my fellow Jews.
A brave entered the hut. A fish smelling of smoke and pine stared glassy-eyed from a bed of palm leaves. Bowing low, he laid it on the ground in front of the chief and drew a sharpened fishbone from his loincloth. With a practiced hand he cut one slice and handed it to the chief. Your grandfather picked up the long, thin strip of flesh and held it to the light of the door. With a snort, he threw the strip out the door, grabbed the fish knife, and knocked the brave to the ground. It was the first time I saw the terrible anger of your grandfather. And his terrible concentration. He took a full minute to cut my slice, another full minute for his own. Placing each piece upon a round wheel of cassava bread, he held a third piece to the light, so I could admire his artistry. I never again saw a man slice fish so thin.
In that orange glow, through that translucent piece of smoked salmon, I first saw your mother.
She is a woman of great faith, your mother. This evening she brought me a broth of wild fowl, boiled in water from the forbidden Fountain of Everlasting Life. I never tasted finer, not here, not home in Córdoba; my hunger will survive till the last. But my faith is from the Old World, and I believe only that these New World waters will be my last meal.
Your mother has poured water on my wound. She has dabbed at the pus oozing from my eye with a remnant of my Franciscan cowl dipped in the water of the forbidden Fountain. It gives me comfort, the copper-colored girl dipping her hem, cooling my wound. I can hear my mother’s viol, a happy melody, no lamentations.
My eyes grow heavy. I look for sleep, for dreams. This wound will not heal. When I am dead, pour water on your anger toward Straight Arrow as you would on a smoldering fire. His name belies his accuracy, but many of us travel by names that seek to hide rather than reveal. His arm threw the ball, his fingers shaped its progress. And yes, perhaps his fingers did move to his mouth and place his spittle upon its seams. But who among us is wise enough to trace the sudden jumps and swerves of a fast ball back to the arm that threw it? Who among us can swear to the God of the Stars that it was not the fault of my own eye to catch what was meant for my bat? Was it my punishment for converting the Mayaimi and the Calusa and the Jeaga from the gruesome human skull to a ball of jay feathers and deerhide? A child’s skull would have fractured harmlessly against my cheek.
Feel no anger against the Calusa. Do not allow my death to become a cause of war. My greatest success was their conversion from the Ball Game of War to the Ball Game of Peace.
Feel no grief for me. I have had a greater fortune than any man since Noah. I have walked upon a great beautiful continent, I have known passion, I have sired a son. I have stood, bat in hand with three men on base, and hit the ball out of the village.
Bury me in the warm beach of the Mayaimi, on the coast of my Florida. Let me lie in the heat of her breast until the continents drift back together.
You are now the only Jew in this new world. What does that mean, you ask me, to be a Jew? I was sent here by Santángel to preserve the Jews. The Expulsion struck the ears of the Minyan in tragic tones, as the funeral dirge of culture, as the death of a rich era of Jewish achievement in Spain. I heard a different chorus. I heard the wailing from the boats as we sailed down the river Tinto from Palos. The tragedy of the Expulsion was the tragedy of three hundred thousand unique voices, each with its own wonderful human melody.
There are those who would argue, since your copper-colored mother is not Jewish, that you are not a Jew. Those others live thousands of miles away. You are one-half my child, and entirely my son. Today the Mayaimi say you are one of them. Tomorrow you will be different. You are a Jew.
You will have children, they will be different. They will grow beside their Mayaimi sisters, they will play ball with their Mayaimi brothers, but ultimately they will become free agents. They will be welcome among any tribe as long as they can still hit the long ball. Then they will be asked to leave, to move, against their will. They will be different. They will be great—but a great, different, new people.
You will have to guide them. You will have to take control of the motion of your people. I, too, began to feel my way alone at the age of thirteen. I had to reinvent, I had to disguise. I had to wear the cloak of a Franciscan, the skin of a deer. I had no rabbi to guide me. By being Esau, I have been a Jew. By being Eliyahu, I have been a Jew. By being a friar, a sailor, a castaway, a Mayaimi, I have been a Jew.
As the wife of the rabbi of Alcaudete said to the apothecary of Córdoba, the grandfather of the lute-loving Kima—you are always a Jew.
Now it is time for you to be Eliphaz.
Games not war, deerhide not skulls. When in doubt, eat, but avoid shellfish. And when they pitch you high and inside, as they will, move. My destiny is secure in your survival. Your survival is assured only in your motion.
Your loving father,
Esau