The Origin of Sorrow

by Robert Mayer

  “Before, merchants wouldn’t take your money?”

  “Now they’re willing to pay higher interest. Borrowing where a Prince borrows makes them feel better. They stop complaining. They stop calling it usury. They start admitting that interest is a cost of doing business.”

  The men reached the midpoint of the bridge. Here, if one looked over the sides, there was a feeling almost of floating as the river stretched endlessly in both directions before it curved out of sight. Light clouds scudding by overhead, reflected on the surface of the water, could cause a fleeting rush of motion, as if the bridge were a magic carpet. Sometimes, when he was alone, Meyer would stand here for a long time, letting the current take his mind to distant places, carrying with it his distant dreams. But today the men were in a hurry, and did not pause. Schnapper did not care to look in any case, being prone to attacks of dizziness

  “So, where did that fine-looking horse carry you today?”

  “Mainz,” Meyer replied.

  “Did you find any treasures in Mainz, if I may ask?”

  “One in particular.” Meyer lifted the leather pouch from his belt, stopped walking and searched through it. He pulled out a small, dirty coin.

  “This is a treasure?” Schnapper asked.

  “It will be, after I clean it better. It’s ancient. From Mesopotamia.”

  “The land of the Torah,” Schnapper said, nodding. “If you don’t mind my prying, how much will you sell this for?”

  Meyer took the coin back from him and returned it to the pouch. “That depends,” he said. “Whatever Crown Prince Wilhelm is willing to pay for it.”

  “You’re doing business with the Crown Prince?”

  They resumed walking along the bridge. The shorter man looked at the other’s face with a doubting smile.

  “I intend to begin,” Meyer Amschel said. “With this coin.”

  “What if his royal honor doesn’t want it?”

  “He’s a collector. Any collector would want it.”

  “And if he won’t meet your price?”

  “Then I’ll meet his.”

  “What if he offers you less than you paid for it? You’ll take a loss?”

  “I won’t look at it as a loss. I’ll consider it an investment.” He looked off into the distance, seeing things that only he could see. A gull crossed his line of sight carrying a fish in its mouth. “It will be an investment in future business with the Crown Prince. At which time, I’ll have such treasures that he’ll meet my price.”

  Schnapper peered at him, trying to conceal any expression. This was an unorthodox approach to finance. They walked in silence. A small boat with its sail unfurled passed beneath the bridge. They could feel the river’s current in their feet as it lapped against the arches.

  “You know something, Meyer Amschel,” Schnapper said. “I’m becoming a rich man. Not rich by Gentile standards, of course, but rich in the lane. My children, Dank Gott, will never go hungry. I can even give a bit to charity. I venture to guess I’m one of the twenty richest men in the Judengasse. But approaching the Crown Prince? Suddenly I have a feeling you may surpass me one day, if you’re not careful.”

  “Then I must try not to be careful,” Meyer said.

  “You must also continue to have good luck. As you did in finding that coin.”

  Meyer paused to tighten his purse, which was hanging too low and banging against his thigh. “With all respect, sir, I don’t believe in luck.”

  “In what, then? Fate? Were you fated to find that coin from Mesopotamia? Perhaps Abraham himself blessed it and said, One day Meyer Amschel in the Judengasse of Frankfurt shall have this coin.”

  “That would be nice to believe. The more modest explanation is this: I received word yesterday that a certain coin dealer in Mainz had obtained such a coin. Taking passage on the public coach today would have gotten me home too late for the funeral, as we have discussed. Tomorrow is the Sabbath, so I could not travel to Mainz. Sunday the gates of the lane remain locked. Monday would be the earliest I could go to see it. Possibly some Gentile dealer would have bought it by then. That’s why I rented the fastest horse in the stable, and rode him to weariness. So I would have the best chance to buy the coin. Luck was not involved. Those who trust to luck get second best.”

  “Ah,” the court factor said. “But you happened to learn about the coin right away. Was that not luck?”

  “I have made friends in various towns. They keep me informed by post of what is available. Luck, in my view, is three-fourths information.”

  “And these friends of yours in various towns. They are loyal to you, they keep you informed, because … ?”

  “Because in the past I have sold them coins.”

  “Let me guess,” Schnapper interrupted. “In the past you have sold them coins at whatever price they were willing to pay.”

  The younger man did not respond. The conversation ended suddenly. It was always thus as Jews approached the Fahrtor, the main gate to the city, which stood at the end of the bridge. The Fahrtor was a stone tower six stories high. The first two stories were pierced by a pointed archway through which foot and carriage traffic moved in and out of the city. On the face of the Fahrtor, travelers entering the city saw a large painted stone engraving. It was famous — or notorious — far and wide as the Judensau — the Jews’ Sow. The engraving was dominated by a large female pig. Beneath the pig several human figures were seated, sucking at its teats. At the rear of the pig, one man was holding up its tail while another, with his tongue protruding, was preparing to eat the pig’s emerging excrement. To the rear, two men with hats and long beards, clearly representing Jewish elders, were watching. All the figures were wearing the pointed yellow hats that until recently had been mandatory for Frankfurt’s Jews. Lettering under and through the image said: “Drink it, Jew, drink its milk/ Rabbi, eat its excrement.”

  The engraving was not the work of an odd or obscene individual. It had been put there, and was maintained in good repair, by the City of Frankfurt.

  The two men tried not to look at the image as they passed beneath it. Each could not help flicking his eyes to it for an instant. Each could not help noticing the other do the same. By now, seeing the Judensau should have no effect on them, they believed. It was only a drawing; the confinement of the Judengasse was life. But the engraving always seemed to fill the air they were breathing with a heaviness that precluded speech, and sometimes induced nausea. Rage flared in their chests that had no place to go but deep within them. Such bitterness could not be expressed. Such bitterness could not be discussed. It could only be absorbed as pain beside the heart, as helplessness behind the eyes. It could only be battled by each man alone.

  From the Fahrtor arch they could see and hear and smell the busy port at work. The wharves were piled high with logs, with barrels of wine and cheeses and spices, with bales of cloth imported for the women of Frankfurt to turn into clothing. Seamen, coach drivers, food hawkers, money changers shouted, one voice above another, in a salty cacophony. Horses, donkeys, mules, oxen harmonized with their smells. Invisible by daylight but present nonetheless were thousands of brown rats that lived in the docks, sleeping by day in walls and under floors and burrowed into piles of garbage, crawling out at night to feast on spilled cheeses, meats, grains, rinds, whatever they deigned to eat. For the Judengasse, the nearness of the docks was a blessing — it kept the lane mostly free of rodents. That, and canisters of ratbane, and the diligence of the women in keeping their homes clean.

  Passing under the tower, the men reached into their purses to pay the toll required of everyone entering or leaving the city. The toll for Christians was four kreuzer. The toll for Jews was eight. In a city ledger the men were required to sign their names. The older man signed first: Wolf Salomon Schnapper. The younger man followed, with his barely legible signature: Meyer Amschel Rothschild.

  The stone steps from the bridge led to a narrow riverside beach. A path alongside the sloping sewage sluice climbed to th
e ghetto wall. The two men followed the wall and entered the Judengasse at the north gate, which was closest to their homes. Wolf Schnapper was delighted to find his daughter Guttle, in Sabbath finery, waiting for him inside the gate. He hugged her and put his arm around her shoulder and together they walked to the Owl. Meyer Amschel hurried off toward the Hinterpfann, his own house across the lane.

  5

  Consternation hovered over the lane like a Talmudic argument. In little more than an hour the Sabbath would begin; just before dark it would be time to light the lamps and candles, time to welcome the happiest day of the week, a day of rest and study and joy. The lamps and candles would illuminate every kitchen, every window, turning the Judengasse into a weekly festival. But was it proper, people were wondering, to celebrate when a funeral was soon to begin? Wouldn’t that dishonor the deceased?

  In the Schnapper household, as in many others, this question was delaying dinner. Guttle’s father sat at one end of the oak table covered with its white Sabbath cloth, his wife Emmie at the other. Guttle and Avra sat side by side, the three younger ones across from them. All were wearing their best Sabbath clothes, ready to walk to the synagogue after the meal. It was traditional to light the festive lamps and candles before eating. Frau Schnapper did not know what to do.

  “Maybe I should go ask the Rabbi,” Guttle said.

  Her father thought that was a good idea. Guttle tucked her braids under her black velvet cap and hurried down the stairs. In the deserted lane she walked quickly to the home of the Chief Rabbi, adjacent to the schul, and knocked on the door. She had not seen a Sabbath lamp in a single window along the way. None was burning in the Rabbi’s window. Perhaps it was still too early.

  She had to knock a second time before she heard his sturdy footsteps moving to the door. When it swung open the Chief Rabbi was putting on his glasses to see who had knocked at dinner time. He peered at her closely, taking a moment to put a name to her face.

  “The Schnapper girl,” he said. He added, after a pause, “You haven’t found another one, I hope.”

  Guttle’s hand flew to her mouth to hide an unstoppable smile. She hadn’t known that Rabbis made jokes. Especially Chief Rabbis. Especially that kind of joke.

  His question had stolen her voice. The Rabbi said, “Well, what is it? My dinner is waiting.”

  “The lamps,” Guttle managed to blurt. “The candles. We don’t know whether to light the Sabbath lamps, because of the funeral. We don’t want to insult the dead.”

  The Rabbi stepped beside her into the street, looked in both directions, saw no Sabbath lights. He fell into his Socratic teaching method.

  “What do you think should be done? Guttle, is it?”

  She did not hesitate. “I think we should light the lamps.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because the Schul-Klopper — Herr Gruen — would have wanted us to.”

  “Why would he have wanted us to?”

  “People die all the time. But the Sabbath must live forever — or else the Jews will die.”

  The Rabbi leaned forward and pressed his lips to her forehead. His broad beard tickled her nose. The Rabbi thought: Lev Berkov would be a fool not to grab this one. What he said was, “That’s precisely the right answer, young lady.”

  He leaned into the hallway of his house and called out, “Gilda, light the Sabbath lamps now. So everyone will know.”

  He stepped farther out into the lane, Guttle with him. In a second-floor window they saw the Rabbi’s wife spread the curtains apart. They could see the star-shaped metal lamp that hung just below the ceiling. A lamp much like it hung in every apartment. The Rabbi’s wife lowered the lamp. As she lighted the oil in each of the five points of the star, the window brightened like a sunrise. When all five points were burning, she said a brief prayer, and lit two Sabbath candles from a point of the star. She set the candles in the window, and passed her hands over her eyes.

  Almost at once, candles flared in a window directly across from the Rabbi’s house. Then in the house next door to the Rabbi’s, as if the family had seen the lights go on across the lane.

  “Go home now,” the Rabbi said to Guttle. “Don’t keep your family waiting.”

  Flustered, Guttle thanked him. She wanted to ask him if the Shul-Klopper had been murdered, but it was such an absurd thought that she didn’t have the nerve. The deep gray of twilight was filling the narrow lane quickly from the bottom up, like water filling a tub. She began to run home along the cobbles. As she ran it seemed to her that lighted candles were appearing in the windows of every house just as she passed by. As if she were an angel lighting up the stars.

  In the house abutting the Owl on the left, Otto Kracauer was scrubbing blood from his hands. Standing in the bedroom in his dark breeches and gray undershirt he poured water from a clay pitcher into a mismatched wash basin. Lathering his thick hands with soap, he scrubbed at the dried blood on his knuckles and wrists, at blood that had splattered on his hairy arms as far as his elbows. In the kitchen, his wife, Ida, waited for him to finish so she could light the Sabbath lamps. The three boys, Isidor, Aaron and Eli, hungrily eyed the food their mother had prepared.

  The washing off of blood was a nightly chore for Otto, but on Fridays he always found himself more splattered than usual. He was the kosher slaughterer for the Judengasse, and while some families ate chicken several times a week, even most of the poorest, with the aid of charity funds, managed to buy a fresh-killed bird for the Sabbath.

  The slaughterhouse, along with a stable and a herring shop the only Jewish-owned businesses outside the walls, was just to the west of the north gate, a noisy sprawling chicken coop of half an acre filled with squawking birds, floating feathers, smelly droppings, plus a cow or two. Once it had been inside the walls, but for many years now there had been no room in the lane. The neighbors had not been sorry to see it go when the banker Emil Hecksher, said to be the richest man in the Judengasse, bought the business and obtained permission from the city fathers to move it just outside the walls. How much this had cost him in bribes the people could only guess. Otto Kracauer had been the slaughterer for twenty years.

  Finally his hands and arms were clean enough. He dried them and pulled on a clean shirt and joined his family at the table, watching Ida light the five-pointed lamp, and from it the Sabbath candles. When she ratcheted the lamp back up to the ceiling, the overlapping shadows cast by the five copper points seemed to form blurred Hebrew letters she could not identify.

  Lifting a goblet of wine, Otto said the brief blessing — Baruch atau Adonai Eloheinu Melech Ha-Olam, bo-ray peree haguffin. He took a sip. The Sabbath meal could begin. The boys attacked their plates as if they had just spent forty years in the desert. Aaron was eighteen years old, Eli sixteen, Izzy fourteen. All seemed determined to grow three inches that very night.

  “Good chicken,” Otto said to his wife. She knew he was praising not her cooking but the quality of the bird he had brought home. “So tell me, Isidor, what is this news you have?”

  Isidor swallowed whole the piece of potato that was in his mouth. “I went to see the Rabbi today … ”

  “A very good chicken,” Otto said.

  Izzy fell silent, looking at his plate, pushing the roasted potatoes around with his fork.

  “So let him tell you,” Ida said.

  “I’m listening. So tell me already,” the butcher replied.

  Isidor took a breath and started again. He told of all that had transpired with Rabbi Simcha, and with the Chief Rabbi. When he finished, his pride was fighting a bout of nerves that was making his freckled hands tremble.

  “So that’s your news? You’re going to spend your life talking to people about what happened to the Jews since what’s-his-name came.” He wiped his greasy hands with the embroidered handkerchief on his lap. “For that I send you to yeshiva?”

  The butcher’s dark eyes peered across the table at his youngest son. The boy fought hard to hold his gaze, then looked
away, into the flames of the candles. Otto shoved another forkful of food into his mouth. “Good chicken,” he murmured, with his mouth still full.

  He pointed with his empty fork at his other sons. “Look at Aaron and Eli,” he said. “No private conversations with Rabbis. But in a few weeks they’ll be starting their own business. Selling the feathers they gather at the slaughterhouse. And feather pillows and quilts sewn by your mother. That will bring in a nice few gulden. More than talking to old people about the suffering of the Jews.” He paused to drink some wine. “By the way, boys, I’ve been thinking about the name you picked. Kracauer Brothers, Feather Merchants. I have a better idea. We’re going to call it O. Kracauer and Sons.”

  Aaron and Eli, seated side by side, looked at one another, but said nothing. Their father chewed another mouthful of food, sipped again from his goblet. If he noticed how downcast Isidor had become, he didn’t show it as he spoke to the boy.

  “A banker, an importer, these would be good professions for a yeshiva boy. You could make some real gelt that way. But a scholar? Let me tell you something, Izzy the Wise. You want to know the history of the Jews? I can tell you in a sentence. The Talmud says we should eat only fresh-killed meat. Which I know you know. And they have to be killed a certain way, which you also know. They have to be stretched out, lying down, exposing their windpipe. I have to cut their throats in one stroke, with a sharp knife, so that it’s not torture. They die instantly. But the chickens are screaming as we stretch them on the block, and the others smell the blood of the ones I already killed. When one is screaming, they all start screaming. When the Gentiles hear the screaming, when they see the blood on our hands, they make up stories. They tell each other we kill Christian babies, to drain their blood. That we use Christian blood in secret ceremonies. So what do they do? What they do is obvious. They build stone walls around us. They lock us in every night. To protect their Christian babies.” He set his empty goblet on the table, poured himself more wine from the decanter. “So there you have it, Izzy. The history of the Jews in a thimble. Now you can go learn something useful.”