Yiddish for Pirates

O Moishe is out at sea again, farmisht like the farkrimter
    sky,
He's a skinny ship on a farkakteh sea, with no friends to
    sail nearby,
the rum bites and crew shakes, their shikkereh spume
    a-flying
and the seagulls kak on the dreck-slick deck, and always
    their meshugeneh crying.

In case the title got you to wondering, this is what Yiddish for Pirates sounds like; at least from the mouth of a five hundred-year-old multilingual African Grey Parrot who has noshed from the Fountain of Eternal Youth and once sat upon the shoulder of the dread pirate Moishe the Captain. This parrot, Aaron to Moishe's “Moses”, narrates a classic seafaring tale of plunder and derring-do – five centuries after the fact – and like a Borscht Belt comic, most of what he says should be accompanied by an encouraging rim-shot. Hey now! Aaron's narration utilises clever wordplay, plenty of quips that are of the Take my wife...please! variety, but there are also many many stories of the A priest, a rabbi, and a shaman walk into a bar... sort, and it's all totally charming: it's the love of language that elevates this narrative to something special, and like all good comedy, the yuks are masking deeper pain; you can laugh or you can cry, boychick.

Yiddish for Pirates begins with Aaron describing how he and Moishe – a young boy who ran away from his shtetl home to seek adventure on the high seas – were first thrust together during an attack that left the pair adrift in the ocean. The tone is quippy and ironic as they wash ashore, meet up with a young Christopher Columbus, and are sent by the would-be adventurer on an errand to Seville. As they near the city, and noting a festive atmosphere, Moishe sees what he at first takes to be a parade of clowns:

They trudged barefoot, arrayed in red, yellow or black sacks covered in a bestiary of demons emerging from amid the lewd tongues of painted flame, pointed and insane. Each clown surmounted with a peaked hat emblazoned with still more fire. Some robes were drawn-and-quartered by a gash-red cross, as if Father-Son-and-Holy-Ghosted by sword. Man, woman and child, each carried a green or yellow candle, and walked with a noose around the neck, macabre neckties dressing them with a grim and dark formality. At the end of the procession, several men, beaten until barely more than stew, carried in cages pulled by mules.

Ah, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Jews are being gathered and burned at the stake. From here, Moishe (but call him Miguel now) is drawn into plots and subterfuge, has a run-in with the Grand Inquisitor Torquemada, is commanded to accompany Columbus on the Santa Maria by Queen Isabella, and in the New World, watches (and participates) as the Spaniards extend their special brand of avaricious and murderous xenophobia to a whole new continent; it's not like the Indos have souls. Despite the jokes, this book is bloody; and despite meeting Moishe as a boy (and somehow thinking he would retain his innocence), he becomes every inch the pirate. Yet, when Moishe and a band of other misfits commandeer their own sloop and begin to plunder the Spanish ships of their treasures – and books – it's easy to cheer him on as he seeks the mythical Fountain of Youth, for love and vengeance. 

I flew up to the mainmast spar and watched. Sometimes he who watches and remembers is the best soldier. Hope without memory is like memory without hope. I planned to be an alter kaker talking a kak-storm of memories, an old bird who was also a book.

Books and remembrance are important motifs in Yiddish for Pirates, and it's heartening to know that even after the pogroms and expulsions, the segregating ghettos and the multigenerational slayings, a garrulous Yiddish-speaking parrot could keep the story of a young boy from the shtetl alive. You laugh or you cry, boychick. (I would rate this three and a half stars, and am rounding up.)

The  2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize Longlist:

Mona Awad : 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl
Gary Barwin : Yiddish for Pirates
Andrew Battershill : Pillow
David Bergen : Stranger
Emma Donoghue : The Wonder
Catherine Leroux : The Party Wall
Kathy Page : The Two of Us
Susan Perly : Death Valley
Kerry Lee Powell : Willem De Kooning's Paintbrush
Steven Price : By Gaslight
Madeleine Thien : Do Not Say We Have Nothing
Zoe Whittall : The Best Kind of People

*Won by Madeleine Thien for Do Not Say We Have Nothing. Not really a surprise, but this is how I ranked the shortlist, entirely according to my own enjoyment level with the reading experience:

Gary Barwin : Yiddish for Pirates
Catherine Leroux : The Party Wall
Madeleine Thien : Do Not Say We Have Nothing
Mona Awad : 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl
Emma Donoghue : The Wonder
Zoe Whittall : The Best Kind of People

Governor General's Literary Awards (English Fiction) Finalists 2016:

Gary Barwin : Yiddish for Pirates

Anosh Irani : The Parcel
Kerry Lee Powell : Willem de Kooning's Paintbrush

Madeleine Thien : Do Not Say We Have Nothing

Katherena Vermette : The Break

*Won by Thien; not my favourite, but not really a surprise.