by Robert Mayer
Jonah nodded with pursed lips, acknowledging Eleazar’s words.
“And you, Rabbi Simcha,” the Chief Rabbi said, gazing toward the foot of the bed. “Despite the difference in our ages, we have worked closely together for almost twenty years. By this time, you know all that I know about presiding over the lane. The young people in particular love you, perhaps more than they respect me — don’t think I’m not aware of that — and the young, of course, are the future. So there was ample reason to choose you as well.”
Impassive, Simcha said nothing.
“I am not King Solomon. I came up with no brilliant answer. I had to choose between you. My choice was Rabbi Jonah.”
Jonah coughed to conceal his delight at the achievement of his lifelong ambition. Simcha, knowing Eleazar’s precision in speech, wondered at his choice of words.
“I say my choice ‘was,’” the Chief Rabbi continued, “because I have been overruled.”
Jonah could not contain his question, it popped from his mouth like a live animal. “Who can overrule the Chief Rabbi?”
“Adonai, of course.”
He went on to recount what had happened, the threat to Jonah’s heart if he were chosen. “Unlike Abraham with Isaac,” the Chief Rabbi said, “I did not think it was a chance I should take.”
Rabbi Jonah was holding one hand to his chest. “Of course not,” he said, his voice sounding hoarse.
“So now you know why I summoned both of you. Both of you were chosen, as it were. But it is Simcha who shall serve. You, Jonah, shall remain director of the yeshiva, with the knowledge that Adonai is indeed watching. Jonah, tell the Schul-Klopper to announce the decision at evening services today. I shall not last the week. Very likely I shall not last the night.”
“That can’t be true,” Simcha blurted. “You’re looking much better. You’re sounding much better.”
“That may be,” the Rabbi said, nestling his head more comfortably into his pillows. “But the angels are waiting.” He closed his eyes, no longer needing to be strong, his responsibilities drifting away like the smoke from all the chimneys in the lane.
42
In mid-afternoon, Guttle began to wonder about Yussel Kahn. She had seen Brendel leave in the morning, but she had not heard Yussel go. It was possible, with the younger children running up and down the stairs and in and out the door, shouting and playing, that he had left without her hearing him. But she decided to go down to the cellar and check. Pulling away the rug, lifting the trap door, she called down to him. There was no response. The open trap illuminated the ladder. Careful not to trip on her skirt, she climbed down, and turned, saying his name. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she discerned his form on the dirt floor. Reaching to touch him, to make sure he was well, to see if he was hungry, she recoiled suddenly with shame, and turned away. Yussel was naked. And so silent, he might be dead.
She shooed the thought away like a rat, but heard herself whimpering as she climbed the ladder to the vestibule. She left the trap open and hurried out the door. Wanting to run, not wanting to attract attention in case the police were in the lane, she forced herself to appear calm, but walked with rapid strides. At the hospital she hurried in and looked for Doctor Berkov in his office; it was empty. In the next office she found Rebecca at her desk.
“Where’s Lev? I need him to come quickly.,”
“He’s with a patient. What’s wrong?”
“It’s Yussel Kahn. He’s on the ground. He’s not moving.”
Rebecca quickly came around from her desk.
“We need Lev. He’s naked,” Guttle said.
“Stop being silly!”
Guttle led the way from the hospital to the Green Shield, and pointed to the trap door.
“Did he fall in?”
“No. Go look. But don’t look ”
Rebecca already was climbing down the latter. “Give me some light,” she called.
Guttle grabbed the vestibule lamp and the tin of matches beside it, lit the wick and placed the lamp in Rebecca’s upstretched hand. As she did, she heard a deep moan from below. “He’s alive!” she blurted, and started to climb down the ladder, then stopped. “Is he covered?”
“He’s covered,” Rebecca said.
The Doctor was kneeling beside Yussel, holding the lamp near his face, peering into his eyes. “Yussel, can you hear me?”
Yussel moaned.
“What happened?” the Doctor asked.
Slowly, Yussel raised himself to his elbows, peered around the cellar at the stone walls flickering yellow, as if trying to remember where he was. He placed his hand on his forehead. “I had a dream. A mob was chasing me, to hang me. The leader was Voltaire. He tried to grab me, saying ‘the Jew must die’. I wrenched myself from his grasp — and I woke up just before my head slammed into the wall.”
Rebecca peered at his forehead, where the skin had swelled and already was darkening. “He’s got a nasty bruise,” she said, as Guttle knelt beside her.
Yussel raised himself higher. “Voltaire — the hypocritical fraud.”
The Doctor checked each of his limbs, and found no damage.
Yussel sat up gingerly. “My head hurts.” He grimaced as he touched his scalp.
“Can you dress yourself?”
“I want to see Brendel.”
“Put your clothes on. I want to look at that bruise in the light.”
Watching his eyes narrow, then widen again, Guttle could see the dawning within him.
“I’m not going to hide anymore. Have the police come to take me away?”
“Nobody’s taking you away,” Rebecca said.
Guttle touched the Doctor’s shoulder. To Yussel, she said, “They haven’t come yet.”
Rebecca turned to Guttle, her face in the dim light a dark question mark.
“I’ll explain later,” Guttle said.
In the cabinet maker’s shop, Georgi Kremm was making a bookcase, inserting dowels, copying the precise style of his employer. Yussel had told him once how all the great painters had apprentices. Sometimes their paintings were labeled “From the School of Rembrandt.” Or whoever. This bookcase, Georgi vowed, would be from the School of Kahn. Few would be able to distinguish it from the master’s work.
Today, however, he was Yussel Kahn. Or would be, if the police came. Only two officers could recognize him, the two that had come to the lane that time, the tall one with the thin face and the shorter one with the round face. Those two he would not be able fool. But any others … He had thought about it much of the night. He did not know why the police wanted Yussel, but it could not be for anything terrible; Yussel was too good a man, too good a citizen. Yet apparently it was serious enough to cause Yussel to hide. Georgi had stuffed a roll of gulden into his pocket, money he’d earned in the shop. If there was a fine for what Yussel had done, he was prepared to pay it. A cheap enough price for all that he had learned. If the punishment were something more serious, perhaps a few months in jail … well, he might be dead if the Judengasse had not taken him in; he owed them something. Becoming Yussel, he would become a Jew even before the Rabbi sanctioned it. He would prove himself worthy. Worthiness, he had learned in his lessons with Rabbi Simcha, was what being a Jew was about. Worthiness not to your neighbors, not even to God. Worthiness to yourself.
In the morning he had been nervous, but as the hours passed with no police, he had relaxed. He liked himself better for his decision. Even if the police did not come, he had proved to himself his courage.
“Is Yussel Kahn here?”
Bent behind the bookcase, sandpapering the bottom shelf, he choked on sawdust as he heard the words. They had come at last. At least the voice of the officer sounded mild, not brutish. Georgi stood to face the unknown.
The officer was not wearing a uniform. He was dressed in a brown coat, beige breeches, white stockings. He was older than Georgi had expected, white hair showing around his ears beneath his tricorne. Perhaps he sat at a desk at the headquarters on the Fahr
gasse.
“Is Yussel Kahn here?” the man repeated.
Georgi stepped from behind the bookcase, squared his shoulders. He had rehearsed this scene for hours in his bed. For a former peasant boy, the noblest moment of his life. “I am Yussel Kahn.” His voice did not waver.
“You are Yussel Kahn?” The stranger sounded disbelieving.
“At your service, officer.”
“Indeed. What is this masquerade?”
“If you’ll look at the banner outside, sir, you will see my name and profession. Yussel Kahn, Fine Wood Work.”
“Young man, I don’t know who you are. You could pretend to be Saint Peter, for all that I care. But I have known Yussel for more than twenty years. I have sold him dozens of books, and loaned him hundreds. I’ve furnished the very glue you’re using for those dowels. And you are not Yussel Kahn. Can we agree on that?”
Georgi looked at his feet, his face flushing. When he looked up again, he said, “I’m sorry, sir. I thought you were the police.”
“Do I look like the police? What would the police want with Yussel ?”
“I don’t know.”
“I see. I’m sure Yussel did not put you up to this impersonation. In any event, can you tell me where to find him?”
“I would guess he’s at Brendel’s Café, up the lane.”
“Ah, Fraülein Brendel. I’ve been hearing about her for years. And, young man . . .”
“Yes?”
“Do a good job with that bookshelf. I suspect it’s for my shop.”
Georgi was speechless as the bookseller walked out. He felt like a fish with a hook in his mouth, in the pond near their farm. Did this mean the police might still come for Yussel? He hoped not. He could feel his embarrassment melting his resolve. His act of courage had been a declaration of stupidity; he could see that now, and felt ashamed. Despite his Talmudic studies he had not yet overcome the unlearned peasant within.
“Some day!” he vowed, speaking aloud in the empty shop, and he resumed work with vigor on the bookseller’s new shelves. As he worked, he felt his mother watching him, heard her laughing raucously through broken teeth.
Doctor Kirsch had plastered a cut on Yussel’s forehead. Perched as it was on a large purple bruise, it was earning him sympathetic questions as he sat in the Café, drinking tea. Guttle had stayed with him. Meyer joined them upon returning from the city.
The cobbler Alexandre Licht, buying a piece of strudel to take to his shop, noticed the plaster and the bruise, and asked Yussel, “Did Brendel hit you with her frying pan?”
“Voltaire hit me,” Yussel said, “with his duplicity.”
The shoemaker peered, shrugged, not comprehending, and left, his belief affirmed that those people who read too much think too much.
The lane was busy with shoppers, with women returning from the market or the bakery, with children running about, the crowd now redoubling as the heder boys and the yeshiva boys were released from school and their younger siblings ran in and out among longer legs to meet them, the boys sometimes stopping suddenly to retrieve a fallen yarmulke, causing collisions of flesh and bone, sometimes causing tears. Brendel brought a fresh pot of tea to the table and refilled the glasses of Yussel, Meyer and Guttle. Yussel blinked, then rubbed his eyes, as from the passing mass of people a figure emerged that he recognized, but could not place. The bookseller spotted Yussel at once, and approached the table. Yussel jumped up, almost knocking over the table and all three glasses, which wobbled but held steady.
“Gluck! What are you doing here?”
“A nice greeting. Am I not welcome, then?”
“No one has ever been more welcome in my life. Unless you brought the police.”
“What is all this with the police?”
Remembering his manners, Yussel introduced the bookseller to Meyer, Guttle and Brendel, all of whom were too surprised to speak.
“Fraülein Isaacs,” Gluck said, “what a pleasure. You are even lovelier than in Yussel’s descriptions.”
“Am I?” She chucked Yussel’s shoulder.
“Sit,” Yussel said. “What are you doing here? I thought you were in prison.”
“Why would I be in prison?”
“Because of … “Yussel stopped and looked around. “Because of the art books. I saw you arrested yesterday.”
“Ah.” The bookseller finally sat. Yussel, still standing, also sat. “Yes, I was arrested. It had nothing to do with that.”
“Nothing … ?”
Brendel almost swooned. “Thank God,” she said. Standing behind Yussel, her knees weakening, she squeezed his shoulders. “We were terrified — for nothing.”
Guttle and Meyer looked at one another. Meyer squeezed her hand.
“What, then?” Yussel said. “Why else would they take you away?”
“Nathan the Wise.”
“Nathan the … It’s banned! You were selling it!”
“I had them in the cellar. Someone saw me bring one up, and informed.”
“That’s wonderful!” Meyer said, laughing.
“Wonderful?” The bookseller looked puzzled, then hurt.
“What did they do to you?” Yussel asked.
“Do to me? Nothing. A fine of ten gulden. And a warning — next time a hundred gulden. That I cannot afford.”
“Gluck, I’m glad you came here. More than glad. But, if I may, why did you come?”
“To talk about the art books. The authorities will be watching me now. I can’t take the risk anymore. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry! You’ve brought us wonderful news. We thought … I thought … never mind what I thought. Cowards die many times before their deaths.”
“Are you saying you’re a coward?” Meyer asked.
“Not me. Shakespeare.”
“Shakespeare did not live in the Judengasse.”
“We’re not cowards,” Guttle said, “yet we die every day when the gates are locked.”
“Enough about death!” Brendel said. “Yussel is safe. We’re all safe. That’s what matters.”
Yussel kissed the midsection of her sky-blue dress, just above her apron. “A bottle of wine,” he said, looking up into her smile. “That new champagne. To celebrate!”
She bent and kissed the top of his head, between his bruise and his yarmulke, disappeared into the kitchen, returned with a bottle of Moët — which the French had recently begun exporting — and four wine glasses. Yussel with his strong hands popped the cork, and poured.
“What shall we toast?” Guttle asked.
“How about Mendelssohn?” the bookseller suggested, pointing to the framed drawing on the wall. “The real Nathan the Wise.”
“No,” Yussel said. He stood. “I will make the toast.” He held up his glass. “The simplest and the oldest toast in the world. And the most profound. L’ Chaim!”
“L’ Chaim!” the others echoed in unison, and sipped the champagne. Brendel’s smiling lips sipped from Yussel’s glass.
Yussel sat. “L’ Chaim,” he repeated softly, in a voice both weary and relieved. Never before had the commonplace toast meant so much to him. L’ Chaim. To life.
“About your helper,” the bookseller said. He motioned to Yussel’s bruise. “Did you and he knock heads together? He seems to think he is you.”
“He thinks he is me?”
“That’s not acceptable,” Brendel said. “Not without proof.” She winked at the bookseller, and went to attend to the customers now streaming in.
Yussel’s eyes followed her with adoration. “L’ Chaim!” he said again, and he raised his glass and drank, the bubbles of the odd new wine tickling the roof of his mouth. Licking his lips for the last drop, setting down the glass, he murmured it quietly, again. To life.
Doctor Kirsch was sitting behind her desk, in the black dress that without her quite realizing it was her mourning for the future, the acknowledgment of a loneliness that she had not permitted herself to feel in fifteen years. The hospital was almost em
pty. She never wanted people to be ill, but today more work would have helped her keep her mind from feeding on itself. This rarely had been a problem for her, but had become one in recent weeks as she began to recognize and accept her feelings for Emil Simcha. She thought she had buried feelings like that when she was nineteen years old. Then last night her longings had been exposed for the foolishness they were.
Footsteps on the wooden floor broke her indulgent reverie; more than broke it, shattered it like a China plate. She looked up to see the last person she expected in her doorway. Caught halfway between pleasure and anger, her face remained without a clear expression.
“If you’re not busy,” Rabbi Simcha said, “I’d like you to come and walk with me. I have something to talk about.”
Rebecca raised her eyebrows without realizing it and left her desk and moved past him in the doorway and out through the entrance into the lane. Simcha started toward the south end, and she walked beside him.
“Rebecca, why did you come to the Judengasse?”
“That’s an odd question after fifteen years. To be a Doctor, of course.”
“Of course. And I came to teach at the yeshiva. In the twenty years I’ve been here, only three people besides myself have come to live here voluntarily. Brendel Isaacs, who came to be with Yussel. Georgi Kremm, who was escaping a war. And you.”
“Your point being?”
They were threading their way among shoppers in the lane and children playing noisily.
“My point being, I used to think no one would come here unless they were hiding from something. There were a dozen yeshivas I could have chosen, but I came to the most oppressed ghetto in the German lands. You could have chosen a dozen hospitals, but you came here — a place where we get locked in at night. I’ve been asking myself why we both did this. I haven’t entirely abandoned my earlier theory, but I’ve come up with a new one, at least for the two of us. Perhaps Yahweh meant for us to be together.”
She stopped and turned to face him. Her face flushed, then paled. Her features became stony with anger, but her voice was controlled. “How can you say such a thing? After what you told me last night. I saw you going into Frau Baumgarten’s house today. What happened, did she turn you down? ”
