Read Yiddish for Pirates for Free Online Page B

together?
    “What of the dragons and the monstrous whirlpools which hunger for your ship?” Moishe said.
    “Some also believe the woods filled with witches, ghosts and demons, but these are only shadows or squirrels made infernal by fear.” Columbus emptied his mug of wine with a flourish and sleeved his mouth. “A traveller with a good stick can easily manage these travails.”
    He stood up, the better to continue his enthusiastic oration to the crowd of boy and parrot.
    “Not long ago, they thought a book could only be made through the crablike crawling of the human hand, but Gutenberg showed us a new route was possible. Soon they will take their moveable type and print books with my name in them. Histories and new maps of the world with ‘Columbus’ written over the western seas.”
    Then this lord of the new ocean listed toward the barn where he would collapse beside pigs and chickens.
    “Do you think that what he says could be true—that the world is a snake with its tail in its own mouth?” Moishe asked. “Could he sail to the Indies?”
    “I’m sure by now that that balmelocheh has the chickens ready to wager their eggs on it. But ver veyst? Who knows? Here am I, an African Grey, speaking to a boy, five thousand miles from where I was born. Could my mother have dreamt this when I was hatched from the egg?”
    Later, as he staggered toward sleep, Moishe took his father’s book from its hiding place beneath a bundle of rags. Columbus’s words reminded him of its circular maps. But, unwrapping the cloth that protected it, he discovered that the book, waterlogged when he was wrecked off the coast, had dried into a paper brick and would not open.
    Perhaps all it needed was another good dunking. The hair of the dog that fressed upon it.

    Early morning. The sun squinting bloodshot over the droop-eyed horizon.
    An early exodus along the coast road. We were to work for the farmer in exchange for food and lodging, but planned to be far away by the time he came looking for us. You’re no one’s worm if you’re earlier than the early bird.
    The two of them held their heads and shielded their eyes against the daylight and the effects of wine. I sat on Moishe’s shoulder and closed my eyes.
    A worn path through the rolling hills, the beaches and the steady breaking of the waves far below. We walked between dusty boulders and stunted trees, the only sounds the shuffle of their feet and the occasional bird. Then low murmuring, but, half asleep, I imagined it nothing but the rumble of Moishe’s belly.
    We continued over a small rise and along a curving cliffside road.
    “I was thinking …” Moishe began.
    But then the unmistakeable scrape of a blade drawn from its scabbard. Three men jack-in-the-boxed from behind the rocks. A thin youth soon had a dagger across Columbus’s chicken neck. The older and thicker two stood in front of us. All were wrapped in rags.
    “Money,” the one to the left said darkly. An orator, his demands were expressed with near-classical economy.
    Moishe had nothing but the book tucked into his shoulderbag and one remaining silver piece sewn into his waistband, the other having being lost in the escape from the burning ship.
    I had nothing but my keen wits, my good looks, and my treasure trove of many words.
    Columbus, of course, had untold riches.
    Just not yet.
    I have not found ruffians to be at ease with the concept of IOUs.
    It was not long before Columbus was on the ground, the knife ready to carve him into brisket.
    One of the shtarkers held Moishe while the orator punched him in the kishkas, hoping, one assumes, to have him puke money.
    I took this moment to attempt an old trick. A parrot, desirous of pecking-order dominance, doesn’t futz around with pecking. He stretches his wings wide and swoops clawfirst and topples the rival parrot.
    The orator’s head, perched on his shoulders, would be the rival parrot.
    I flew up and began my swoop.
    If his head didn’t fall off, at