The Origin of Sorrow

by Robert Mayer

  “I got you a nice chicken,” Frau Schnapper said, pulling a wrapped bird from one of two string bags. “And four small potatoes. And a little piece of sweet, for a treat.”

  Hiram Liebmann, the younger son, emerged from the front bedroom, holding his pocket watch and a piece of paper marked 1 + 10, which he showed to Frau Schnapper. It had taken her one hour and ten minutes for her to return, from the time he’d seen her leave through the gate.

  Behind him appeared his older brother, Hersch, who scowled when he saw the food on the table. “What’s all this?” he asked.

  “Frau Schnapper brought it from the market,” his mother said. “Wasn’t that nice?”

  “Give it back. We don’t want charity.”

  “Oh, it’s not charity,” Frau Schnapper said. “You can pay for it when you have money.”

  “When do you think that will be? I don’t get paid much for sweeping the schul.”

  “Don’t you and your brother have a grave to dig?” his mother asked. “When you get paid for that, we’ll have enough. Till then, your father could use a good meal. He’s in there under the covers, he’s always so cold.”

  Hersch said no more, but motioned to Hiram and led the way down the stairs. Watching them go, Guttle knew the brothers had seen her as a child, acting as if she were not there.

  “I’m sorry,” Yetta said to Emmie. “He’s angry a lot these days. I don’t know what dybbuk has gotten into him.”

  “This time of year, the spring air warming up, is worst on the young ones,” Frau Schnapper said. “Guttle is the same. Sometimes I think their bodies have ancient memories, of trees and fields, of lakes in which to swim — and it makes them a little crazy. They haven’t learned yet how to accept the walls.”

  “It’s a hard thing to learn,” Yetta said. “Sometimes I think my Hiram is the lucky one. He doesn’t expect so much.”

  The women indulged themselves in a mutual sigh. Frau Schnapper left soon after, carrying her own purchases, to begin preparing the Sabbath meal. Guttle followed silently, feeling invisible.

  Mentioning the grave her sons needed to dig had given Yetta an inspiration. She entered the small bedroom, where Leo peered from beneath covers pulled to his neck. “I have to go out,” she said. “I’ll be back soon.”

  She walked down the two flights of stairs slowly, holding tight to the rickety banister. In the lane she stayed close to the houses, ready to grab hold in case an uneven cobble twisted her ankle, or broke her shoe. Soon she reached her destination — the Judengasse hospital. It was a three-story building with examining rooms at street level and space for eight beds upstairs, twelve in an emergency. A Doctor’s helper, seated at a table looking bored, asked what she needed. Yetta said she wanted to see the Doctor. When the assistant asked what the trouble was, Yetta told him it was a private matter.

  In his office down the hall, Doctor Berkov stood from behind his writing table and helped her to a straight-backed chair. He, too, asked what the trouble was.

  “There’s no trouble,” she replied. “I’ve come about the coat.”

  “What coat?”

  “The Schul-Klopper’s coat. When you bury him, you won’t be needing his coat.”

  “You have a use for it?”

  “My husband. You’ve seen him. He’s cold all the time. For him I would like the coat.”

  The Doctor pondered. The deceased had not been diseased, he was fairly certain of that. “I don’t see why not,” he said, finally. “It’s probably a good idea.”

  He went to another room, and returned with the worn black coat and handed it to her. At once she noticed a white stain near the collar.

  “What’s this?” she asked, pointing.

  “Spilled milk.”

  “That I can wash out.”

  She thanked him, and with the coat folded under her arm she walked home, past the bakery with its warm smells of challah, past a pawn shop and a moneylender, past the rag picker’s stall, till she climbed the steep stairs in her house. She found Leo sitting at the table in the kitchen, hoping she would fix a glass of tea.

  “Better than tea, look what I got for you. A new coat!”

  “A new coat? From where did you get a new coat?”

  “It was the Schul-Klopper’s. He won’t be needing it.”

  Leo was a small man and seemed of late to be melting into nothing. He looked at the coat, stood, carefully put his arms through the sleeves, shrugged the collar onto his neck. The hem of the coat reached below his ankles. “Look, it fits,” he said.

  Yetta smiled, or at least one could say the corners of her mouth pulled back out of memory. She had done well. She moved to the kitchen, poured water from an earthen jar into the kettle for tea. She lit a few pieces of kindling in the stove.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m making you tea.”

  “I don’t want tea. I’m going for a walk in my new coat.”

  With no further words Leo was out the door in his brown slippers, shuffling down the stairs, both feet touching each step, the way small children do. Yetta let the water boil for herself. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone out.

  He shuffled only as far as the rag dealer’s shop, thinking: the coat of a dead man she wants me to wear! He shrugged off the coat, handed it to the skinny proprietor, Ephraim Hess. With a minimum of haggling they struck a deal. The rag dealer handed Leo a few kreuzer. He was still standing there, placing the coins in his pocket, one by one, when the rag dealer’s waif of a wife, Eva, came out from inside the shop, carrying in a small blanket a newborn child. Handing the baby to her husband, she inspected the coat quickly. Just as quickly she pulled a faded dress from a nail at the front of the stall , and hung the coat there, the spot most visible to passersby.

  “Eva, you can’t put it out so fast,” her young husband told her. “That’s the Schul-Klopper’s coat. He hasn’t even been buried yet.”

  “All the better,” his wife said. “Someone can dress nice for the funeral.”

  The infant started to squall. Eva took the baby, opened her blouse, gave the child a lovely breast on which to suck.

  “That’s a fine-looking child,” Leo said. “What name do you call her?”

  “It’s a boy,” the rag dealer said, the pride of a new father in his voice. “Our first child. Only eight hours old. We named him Solomon, after Israel’s greatest king.”

  “After Israel’s greatest poet,” the wife said.

  Leo offered a nod of understanding. “One Solomon dies, another Solomon is born. It’s the way of the world.”

  He left them looking love into one another’s eyes, and shuffled home with a new rhythm in his steps, humming to the music of the coins clinking in his pocket. He was not so old he could not remember young love. When he entered the apartment after a slow climb up the stairs, Yetta, appraising him as if she were a dealer in old men, said, “What did you do with your new coat? You didn’t lose it already!”

  “I didn’t lose it. I sold it to the rag dealer.” He jingled his pocket, and shook his elbows as if he were about to dance.

  “You sold it? It was supposed to keep you warm.”

  “Now we have money to buy wood. To keep you warm, too, bubbelah. And to cook the chicken.” He eased himself onto a chair. Both the chair and his knees creaked.

  “We already have wood to cook the chicken,” Yetta said.

  “Then it’s to buy wood for next week’s chicken.”

  “Wood for next week’s chicken? We don’t have chicken for next week’s chicken. Besides, the coffin maker gives us wood. He gives the boys his odds and ends, pieces too small to use. He doesn’t charge for that.”

  “There you go. In case he starts to charge, we’ll have money for wood.”

  Yetta shook her head, closing her eyes as she did, as she had been doing for thirty-five years. She approached her husband and pressed her lips to the top of his flaking head. He was bald except for a gray fringe that circled the back from ear to ear.
“I don’t know what to do, Leo. I tried to do something nice for you.”

  “What you can do nice for me?” He took her wrinkled hand and gently pulled her onto his boney knees, which had almost worn through his breeches. “What you can do nice for me, Yetta darling, is live with me until I die.”

  “All the way till then?” She tugged lightly at his chin. “That’s a lot to ask, you know. That young Doctor has a schön tush.”

  He pushed her off of his lap. “In that case, make me a glass of tea before you run away with him.”

  Yetta kissed the whorls of his ear, from which small white hairs were growing, and made him a glass of tea. He chopped with a knife at a bowl of honey, and when a small piece broke off placed it between his lips. As he sipped the tea through the crystal honey, Yetta sat across from him and watched, saying nothing.

  And if, as he drank his tea, he was thinking what lovely breasts the rag dealer’s young wife has, what harm was being done?

  Doctor Lev Berkov, wearing the brown breeches, loose-fitting white shirt and leather vest that was the fashion for younger men, caught up with the Chief Rabbi just as he was locking his study, and asked to speak with him. Rabbi Eleazar said he had no time just then, but when the Doctor said his problem was related to the forthcoming funeral, the Rabbi gave him a questioning, annoyed look, then reluctantly unlocked the door and motioned him inside. The Rabbi seated himself behind his desk, but did not put a match to the lamp; the only light in the room filtered in through the single curtained window that faced the lane. The Rabbi was dressed, as always, in black. The Doctor at first had difficulty seeing him.

  “It’s about Solomon Gruen,” Berkov said, seating himself on a wooden chair. He removed his three-cornered hat, making sure with his right hand that the yarmulke he wore underneath had remained in place.

  “What about him, may he rest in peace?” the Chief Rabbi said. Avram Eleazar was sixty-two years old, not tall but broad-shouldered, looking more like a sea captain than a man of religion, except for the pallor above his full gray beard. He’d been the Chief Rabbi in the Judengasse for fifteen years, had carried its burdens on his shoulders more than people knew.

  “I’m not certain that he died of heart seizure,” the Doctor said.

  The Rabbi frowned, his expression almost lost within his beard. “Heart seizure, brain seizure, what does it matter? Dead is dead — not to sound harsh. We still have to bury him before the sun sets.”

  In his four years at the hospital the Doctor had become used to giving bad news. He found what he needed to tell the Rabbi more difficult than he had expected. “The hospital is not set up to do an autopsy, as you know. We need all our space for the living. Most often there’s no need, the cause of death usually has been lingering, and is plain to see. I do what little I can to look over the body without defiling it. I look in the nose, the mouth, the ears, as a matter of simple medical procedure. In Herr Gruen’s case, there may be a problem.”

  “What sort of problem?” The powerful voice emanated disembodied from the dark.

  “When his glands dried — his salivary glands — I found traces of a white residue on his tongue, and leading down into his throat. I don’t know what it is.”

  The Rabbi pulled a gold pocket watch from his vest. It was a recent gift from a Rabbi from Weimar who had come to join the staff of the yeshiva, which, despite the walls, was known throughout the region for its Talmudic studies. He squinted at the watch, angling it toward the window so he could read the face. He did not return it to his pocket, but set it on his desk. “About this you’re bothering me?” he asked, sounding more irritated than he’d intended. “White something that you don’t know what it is? Salt is white. Milk is white. Cheese is white. Crystals of honey are white. You’re the Doctor, why do you come to me?”

  “It’s none of those things. I’m afraid it’s nothing he would normally ingest, or I wouldn’t be here. It’s the residue of a fine powder that reminds me of no food.”

  “Out with it, Doctor. What does it remind you of?”

  Berkov hesitated. A carriage passing slowly on the cobbles rattled the window. There was no room for horses or coaches to be kept in the lane, but frail or wealthy residents sometimes paid a driver to deliver goods to their doors in narrow one-horse carriages. When the noise had faded, the Doctor said, “It reminds me of arsenic.”

  “Arsenic? Arsenic is a poison. Why would the Schul-Klopper swallow arsenic? Are you saying he killed himself? I don’t believe that. Not for a moment!”

  “I’m not saying that. I’m not even saying it’s arsenic. I don’t know what it is. If it is arsenic, I still wouldn’t think he killed himself. If he were to do that, for whatever reason, he most likely would have done it in his room. Arsenic works quickly. I don’t think he could have ingested it and then walked the length of the lane, pausing to knock on every door, and reached the end alive.”

  “I knew Solomon Gruen well,” the Rabbi said, leaning his elbows on his desk. His words were spoken slowly, as if he were controlling great anger. “There was no indication he was troubled. If he were, he would have come to me. Besides, he was a pious man, and the Talmud forbids self slaughter. He did not kill himself.” The Rabbi slapped the flat of his hand on the oak desk top. The pocket watch jumped. “Do you understand?”

  Pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, wiping his face, the Doctor said, “I agree with you completely. I never meant to suggest that was the case.”

  “Then what is it you are suggesting?”

  “I’m saying that if my guess is correct — and it is only a guess — somebody fed it to him.”

  “That’s absurd,” the Rabbi said, standing abruptly. “Who would do such a thing?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Why would anyone do such a thing?”

  “I have no idea about that, either. I’m a physician, not a Constable. I’m only telling you of a possibility. People often gave the Schul-Klopper something to drink when he knocked on their doors, am I right? A glass of tea, a glass of milk. It was considered a mitzvah. The poison could have been mixed into something that he drank shortly before he died.”

  “Where would someone get arsenic without arousing suspicion? Without being reported to the police?”

  “It’s in every house in the lane. Ratsbane.”

  The Rabbi shook his head. “I won’t listen to any more of this. A murderer in the Judengasse? I don’t believe it. I won’t believe it.”

  “I understand how you feel, Rabbi. But who would have thought that a son of Adam, the creation of Yahweh himself, would be a murderer?”

  Deflated, the Rabbi lowered himself into his chair. His tone became softer. “You want to know something, Doctor? That’s my least favorite story in the Torah. I never believed Cain had motive enough to kill his brother. And Abel certainly was not at fault in any way.” He picked up a drinking mug on his desk and studied it, as if looking for an answer there. “I suppose Cain is meant as a symbol,” he said. “A warning that we all have the capacity for evil.”

  “One of two brothers. Fifty percent evil. That’s quite a warning.”

  “You forget Seth.”

  “Yes, there was also Seth. So two thirds of our human make-up is good.”

  “Most of the time.” Wearily, the Rabbi moved his arm in a circle above his head, perhaps to indicate the stone walls that surrounded them. “But that’s another matter. Are you asking me to delay the funeral?”

  “Not at all. There’s no need for that.”

  “You’re not suggesting we call in the police? They disturb us enough on their own.”

  “No police, Rabbi. Certainly not till we have more information.”

  “So why have you told me this?”

  “Medical ethics, in my view, requires that I pursue the matter. I plan to take the residue to a chemist in the town, to find out what it is. I just felt that, as the head of the community, you ought to be informed.”

  “What if you’re right, and the chemi
st goes to the police?”

  “He won’t. We pay him hundreds of gulden a year for medicines. He’ll do as I say. Besides, I won’t tell him the circumstances.”

  From outside the window came the sound of another narrow carriage clattering along the cobbles. The Rabbi unfolded from his chair, looked at his watch, placed it in his vest pocket. “I suppose I should thank you for telling me,” he said. “Now I’m sure to get heartburn from the Sabbath dinner my good wife has spent all day preparing. I hope I still have some soda powder upstairs.”

  “If you don’t, we have plenty at the hospital. It’s our most common request.”

  Moving to the door, the Rabbi stopped. “What about soda powder! That’s white. Have you thought of that?”

  “I’m afraid I have. But it fizzles when you drink it. I would expect to find residue on the roof of the mouth, perhaps inside the cheeks. Not just on the tongue and throat. That’s just my surmise, of course. I could be wrong. Even so, why would Herr Gruen drink soda powder first thing in the morning?”

  “It fits,” the Rabbi said. “Solomon woke up with chest pains. He thought it must be indigestion. So he took some soda, to settle his stomach. And he went out on his rounds. Only this time it was not indigestion. The pains were from his heart. When he reached the end of the lane, his heart failed.”

  “It’s a tempting scenario.”

  “Of course that’s what happened! You can dispose of your residue. I’m glad you came to me, Lev, to talk things out before you did anything rash.”

  “I’ll pray that you are correct,” the Doctor said. “But on Monday I’ll take the residue to the chemist.”

  “Why stir up trouble that isn’t necessary?”

  “If Herr Gruen was poisoned, there is a sick murderer among us. He could kill again.”

  For the second time in the conversation the Rabbi felt deflated. “Go,” he said. “I won’t discuss this any further. My wife is waiting upstairs. No doubt she’s angry already.”