I turned round, slightly puzzled, in the whirl of voices and stories. No one seemed to be paying me any attention; the day’s news was the reappearance of the old man. Everyone who had known Ismail before he had gone to Mokha — which is why he was known as the Mokhan — seemed to hold him in great esteem, and there was a certain solemnity in the way they talked about him, replying to the questions of new arrivals, boys and girls who had served Don Yossef and Donna Reyna for only a few years, some for only a few months. They listened with admiration to the stories that danced their way from mouth to mouth. They nodded and returned to their tasks filled with more curiosity than before, anxious to see el Alemán, when someday soon he would come back to the palace.
I followed these stories, too. They announced themselves as vague references, two sentences thrown there as if to say pay attention to me, I know what’s going on, and then they were referred to, commented upon, provided with the kind of glosses applied to ancient poems, and through those glosses they merged together and poured into one another, assuming new forms and consistencies. The old man appeared now in one country, now in another: He had been in Africa and France, in Chipango and Cathay. He had known Martin Luther, I heard a cook saying to a young scullery maid in the doorway to the kitchen. I was listening from behind a column, my back resting against the cool marble, my eyes closed. The woman spoke an enchanting Ladino that reminded me of my childhood, every sentence ending on a high note, a bit like when in Italy you hear people from Ascoli or Ancona talking. Her voice was intoning the story of Ismail and Luther, luring new people to stop and listen.
The old man hadn’t just known Luther, he’d been with him that day when they nailed a big piece of paper on the door of a church in some German city, a paper that was read by lots of people and infuriated the pope. And what had he written on it? That the relics of the saints are nothing but filth, bones to be thrown to the dogs. Such courage! Certainly, but what foolhardiness! Indeed, but such love of truth. But when did Luther die? The replies came flying: Luther’s still alive. No, what are you talking about, he died twenty years ago and he was over a hundred—el Alemán is old, certainly, but not that old; pay no heed to such nonsense. But it’s true that the papists pursued him halfway around the world, because he’s a heretic of the first water. I’ve heard all sorts of things being said about them. And who told you? Lots of people. I’ve also heard them being told to Don Yossef. I just know that he was Donna Gracia’s lover, a male voice said at last, in the tone of someone bringing castles in the air down to the ground. It’s true, a girl added. They say that she died in his arms, down in Tiberias.
At the mention of Gracia Nasi and her last moments, the listeners became lost in thought, the speakers’ voices grew more serious in tone, and the conversation thinned out. In a few minutes, the cluster of people had dissolved and everyone had returned to their own tasks.
I opened my eyes. Standing in front of me was Yossef Nasi.
“Did you hear them?” he said. “The world traveler has returned.”
18
Nasi was in a strange mood, melancholy and thoughtful. The event everyone was talking about, Ismail’s strange secret meeting with Reyna, the trip to Üsküdar at dead of night. . My mentor wore it all stamped on his face, on his forehead and around his eyes, in the wrinkles at the sides of his mouth, in the shadow of a beard that covered his cheeks. All stamped in plain sight, but in characters that I didn’t yet know how to read.
I told him that I had something to report: I had worked out how the dispatches were leaving the bailiff’s house. “Let’s go to the library,” he replied. He told a servant to call David Gomez, and off we set.
In the doorway to the book-lined room, we met the kabbalist Meir, pale in the face as I had always seen him, the black velvet kippah covering his bald skull. “The German has returned, hasn’t he, Don Yossef?” asked the man whose mind revolved around permutations and calculations.
“Yes, master. Ismail is back amongst us.”
“So, this is a sign, and it will need to be interpreted.”
“What do you see in it?”
“The man with many names defies the Gematria,” said Meir. “Which letters will we match up with a number?”
“You know, everyone has called him Ismail for years,” Nasi replied.
“Yes, Ishmael,” repeated the kabbalist, pensive and gloomy, pronouncing the name in Hebrew.
The story of Ishmael is well known to my people. The son of Abraham and the servant Hagar, he was removed from Sarah along with his mother, for mocking his stepbrother Isaac. In the desert, mother and son were helped by an angel, who showed them a spring and urged them not to be afraid, because a great people would be born of the boy’s loins. The Moors saw him as their prophet and the father of their tribe.
If a German heretic had taken that name, did it mean he had turned Muslim?
Anyway, in those letters—Yod, Shin, Mem, Ayin, Aleph, Lamed—there must have been something more, because Meir remained silent, plunged in who knows what computation, his eyes fixed on nothing, and Nasi coughed, in an attempt to bring him back among us. “Don’t weary yourself, master. If you had to ruminate like this on all the names that man has had, you would keep yourself busy for a very long time. When I knew him his name was Ludovico, to others he was Tiziano, and yet others remembered him as Gert. Just leave it; el Alemán has always defied all calculations.”
I remembered what Dana had said to me: Ismail was a river that evaporates and becomes a cloud, to cross the desert and rain on the mountains.
The kabbalist stirred himself and took his leave. At that moment we were joined by David Gomez. The three of us came into the library at the same time, and stood around the big table. At last I told them my suspicions about Ashkenazi and his slippers.
“Ingenious,” said Gomez. “Precisely because it’s trivial.”
“Stay glued to Ashkenazi’s shadow,” Nasi broke in. “I want confirmation. Discover who the letters are passing to and how they are leaving Constantinople.” Then he left.
“Why is he so troubled by the arrival of this German?” I asked Gomez. Rather than replying, he began nosing around among the shelves, examining the backs of the books. He said, “You know that the first printing press was brought to Constantinople by the Sephardim, in 1493? Jews and books always go together.”
He pulled a book that sat on the shelf at eye level, and set it down on the table with a theatrical gesture. A small yellow volume. I picked it up, studied it and recognized its title. It was a forbidden book, one that had caused a scandal in Venice and throughout the whole of Italy many years before. I opened it at random and read a few lines.