Free Yiddish for Pirates by Gary Barwin Page A

Inquisition, then the story would be different.
    The world could be a dangerous library. For a book or a Jew.
    “And Moishe,” Samuel said, “We’ll give you new clothes. You need a disguise.”
    “So get rid of the bird,” Rabbi Daniel said.
    Nu, they didn’t have a disguise for a bird?
    Feh.
    They can take the bird out of the story, but the story stays in the bird.
    They gave Moishe a long brown cape, green leggings, and a red hood. He put on the leather boots that belonged to one of the cathedral Jews. To look like a gnome, that was his disguise?
    But his right shoulder—my shoulder—was to remain unadorned.
    “What else can I do?” the shoulder shrugged.
    Zay gezunt . Be well.
    We’d meet again.
    I knew it was right. Moishe had to go alone. Together, it was like waving a talking, grey-feathered African flag.
    They didn’t leave the cellar all at once. First, two climbed the stairs, speaking quietly to each other. Next Moishe, the rabbi, and Samuel. And then a few more. They blew out the candles, extinguished the torches. I was left alone in the dark, save for the dim light coming from the ceiling of the first room.
    How many parrots does it take to change a light bulb?
    That’s okay. You go out and enjoy yourself. Who needs light? Just leave the door a bisl open. Don’t worry about me.
    I waited, wondering what to do.
    They would return.
    Eventually.
    I tried my wing. Gevalt. It didn’t hurt like hell. It hurt like much of which happens before that.
    But I could still take to the air, if only for short hauls. I didn’t need to fly to heaven. Just into the cathedral. A Christian way station.
    The light in the first room came from a chimney shaft in the ceiling. It led either outside or into another part of the Catedral. I emerged from this stone cloaca, smoke, a farshtunkeneh cloud, a pipe dream with claws.
    Now what?
    It was to be Parrot vs. World.
    The world that I was now born to was small, musty, and bounded by shadows: I was in some kind of cloakroom. Dark red capes lined the walls; above them, like a butcher shochet’s wet dream, hoods hung from hooks.
    Some Hebrew letters at the room’s dim far end. Hebrew books of some kind.
    Since I was invited out of Africa, I have learned many words from the pretty, poxy, scurvy, or sweet mouths of mariners, princes, brigands, maidens, nebbishes, shlumpers and shlemiels, but nothing from their pens.
    Nu, what words would I have had if I’d not been snatched from my parrot life in the scintillation of leaves high in the African forest? I was but a fledgling taken straight from nest to mast and knew little beyond the nutritive regurgitations of my parents— halevay if only, what would they have been like? I would have learned but a beakful of words for rotten fruit and cloacae, for a thousand shades of green and the little wings of my pinfeathered offspring.
    I’d have been a different bird.
    Still with holes in my head, but different holes. In a different head.
    And still, I’d have wanted to get out of this room. And to find Moishe.
    There was a door. Plain as the nose on my face. Azoy, as the breathing holes in my beak.
    But it was locked.
    A broch.
    But then I noticed a small window.
    Open.
    Escape.

Chapter Eight
    I wasn’t outside but found myself behind the altar. Bells began to ring. Nice of them to celebrate my freedom. I flew up into the vault of the nave. The light was startling and I bumped into the diamond-shaped panes of the leadlight windows several times before I adjusted. One of them was open and I flew out and above the slate roof. The city was a vast ocean around me, Moishe a tiny craft adrift in the narrow alleys between its waves.
    I flew in a large circle, unsure which way to go. There were few people out in the streets. Because of the plague, they kept out of public places, except when absolutely necessary, for example, to perform their civic and religious duty in the witnessing of a good life-affirming stake-burning.
    I saw one of the