The Legacy

by Melanie Phillips

  Yet there had always been a backstory, there had been real people hundreds of years earlier making their way in a hostile land. His land. To his astonishment, Eliachim was telling him that the Jews of medieval England had been a force to be reckoned with. He drank in the rich detail. And then, to his deep pleasure, the story took off in a new and delightful direction.

  * * *

  Eliachim’s story (2)

  My father was a man of substance; we lacked for nothing. We knew that whatever foul lies and oaths assailed us from the priests and the common people, our community would be protected by our great usefulness to the King of this realm of savages. To him and his nobles and even to the priests of their accursed church we provided the means to support their wasteful and extravagant luxury. None contributed more than we to their coffers to build their great houses of worship and to fund their wars.

  My master Josce, may God avenge his memory, in whose house I served as secretary and commanded his correspondence and the times of his appointments, held many estates in the county of Yorkshire in pledge. He numbered among his familiars all the nobles of the county, the sheriff and the constable of the castle, the abbot and monks of the cathedral and many more besides. To them he advanced money to buy their corn and their armor, to build their estates and their monasteries. To his house they came to profess false friendship, may they be cursed for all time, as they took his money and caroused at his table with hatred in their faithless hearts.

  His house was like a palace, fashioned of the thickest stone and with vaulted rooms and minstrel galleries and filled throughout with the finest plate and hangings. His drinking vessels were of purest gold and his table was laden with every kind of fowl and beast that is permitted under our laws.

  For many years we lived and prospered under the protection of the former King. The violent humor of the common people was restrained by his edicts, and at those times when the mob was enraged against us the sheriff of the county would grant us the shelter of his castle until the danger had passed, in exchange for gifts of money or precious objects of which our community had an abundance.

  Life was good to us. Indeed, such was the fame of our town for its learning and piety that it attracted the greatest Talmud sages from far and wide. The yeshiva in our town of York, may its name be cursed for all eternity, where Rabbi Yom-Tov who arrived from the great yeshiva of Ramerupt some eighteen summers past when our people were expelled from that land by the Frankish king and who sat at the pinnacle of its scholarship with Josce the magnificent as its patron, was renowned for its brilliance and its piety.

  Every day I would accompany my father to prayers in the house of the cantor, Rabbi Yehuda. It was my father’s custom, after prayers were finished, to tarry and discuss matters of business with others of our faith who were there. I was supposed to be studying my books until he was finished, but I would often while away the time composing songs or poems in my head. One day I stole from the room to pursue a kitten that had run in and looked around desperately, maybe for its mother, before running out again. To my joy I spied Duzelina tenderly stroking the kitten in her arms.

  She beckoned me into another room. There we sat and gazed at each other. She was very shy. I told her of my longing to spend my days in poetry and song instead of Talmud study. Then she spoke most affectingly of her own yearning to be free of the stifling embrace of her family, and of her fate in marrying someone to whom she had been betrothed these past two years but whom she had never even seen.

  How eagerly I now looked forward to accompanying my father to our daily prayers. No longer did he have to drag me out of my bed, and he spoke of his pleasure at my sudden enthusiasm for piety. As my father tarried to converse with his friends and business acquaintances, I would slip into another room where Duzelina was waiting for me.

  We talked as if there was no end to the interests we awakened in each other. She had a quick wit, and was well versed in literature and in history and also in mathematics and astrology. How much she yearned for another kind of life, one in which she would be free to follow wherever her restless, inquisitive mind might lead her. The world was full of wonders, she whispered; they were waiting for her, she felt she could almost touch them, but they were all just beyond her reach. She was destined instead for children, running the household, rules governing every single action of her day: a fettered life.

  I was bewitched. Her beauty, her gentleness, her zest for life which sparkled as brightly as her eyes, all enchanted me. I had never before imagined I could feel such allure. I wanted to hold and possess her forever. May the Almighty forgive me, this led me to destroy what I most deeply loved.

  We had never so much as touched each other, as our faith strictly prohibits any such contact until marriage has bound two souls together. One morning, I read her a poem I had composed expressing my adoration of her. When I finished, she wept. I reached out my arm and my fingers brushed her hand. Instantly I was on fire. I was consumed with such desire as I could never have imagined. I thought she might snatch away her hand, but she did not. Instead, she reached out her other arm and gently touched my cheek. We looked at each other in wonderment. We drew closer, and my mouth pressed down on softly parted lips. My whole body shuddered with longing. I felt the downy softness of her cheek, smelled the fragrance of her hair. We clung to each other as if nothing should ever part us.

  But then the door opened; and standing there was my father. I felt the world around me stop, fixed as if in a tableau. On my father’s face there was first amazement; then horror, and then rage. We flew apart, my beloved and I, and my father dragged me from the room.

  My mother this time did not save me from his wrath. I was forbidden to leave the house until I was to be married. I was told never to say a word about what had happened to anyone lest the family be exposed to shame and disgrace.

  My heart was full of agony. I knew full well the enormity of my crime. It was unthinkable that the younger daughter should marry before the elder. I had risked exposing Genta to humiliation and ridicule. And I had exposed my beloved Duzelina to the danger of becoming a worthless match. For by my impetuous act I had according to our laws made her my wife.

  But worse, so much worse, was that I had desecrated God’s own laws of family purity. My father told me I had betrayed my people and my faith, brought shame upon our household and exposed it to the wrath of heaven. In great tumult of mind, I fell on my knees to beg forgiveness from the Lord of the universe. But my heart was instead full with my love for Duzelina and the words died on my lips.

  Then it was that I knew I would be punished, that the Holy One would make me pay for the crimes I had committed and for which I could not fully repent. But I could never have imagined how terrible that punishment would be.

  * * *

  Kuchinsky, however, was now getting on his nerves. Russell needed to concentrate hard on translating Eliachim’s story. But Kuchinsky wouldn’t leave him alone. He would shuffle into the front room where Russell was working, surrounded by piles of dictionaries and reference books, and come and peer over his shoulder wafting a pungent odor of garlic and sweat that made Russell’s stomach heave.

  “When you finish yet? Is taking long time. Too long.”

  “Well it isn’t easy to do this, you know. Can’t be done in five minutes. Takes a lot of work. And you’re not exactly helping me. All this secrecy, not being able to take it to any experts.”

  Kuchinsky breathed more heavily.

  “You the expert, Mr. Director. No one else see this. You gave me your vord. This book of secrets. You tell only me what it says. Only me.”

  Just what did he think was in it? His intensity was tiresome. The intensity of the obsessed. Whatever. It was just getting in Russell’s way.

  “The story that’s being told is really fascinating, you know. It’s a love story, timeless really, two young people finding each other against the background of all the obs
tacles of their culture and all the violence of the times.”

  “Love story? What I vont with love story? You find love story in women’s magazine, in blessed cinema. I don’t vont with sentimental rubbish. Is something else this book telling us. You find it soon, for sure.”

  There was a hard edge to his voice that Russell didn’t like. He began to feel uncomfortable, even a little intimidated. Absurd; what could an old man like this do to him?

  Lose patience and stop Russell from coming to work on the manuscript before he got to the end, that’s what.

  The wife, Veronica, clearly didn’t want Russell in the house. She would open the front door to him and let him in without a word even of greeting, standing with a surly expression and with arms crossed in front of her while Russell was forced to push past her into the gloom.

  Kuchinsky would prowl round the room while Russell thumbed through the dictionaries and puzzled over the construction of the sentences. Periodically there would be an outburst about politics.

  “This country not vot it vos. Wery sad, wery sad. You go in street, on bus, walk round supermarket, more and more of them you see. What, we’re not supposed to notice what’s happening? Everywhere you see these vimmin, all in black from here to here” (he gestured from his nose to his feet) “only their eyes they let you see. Who know what they have underneath?”

  “Designer jeans and sexy tops, most like,” said Russell lightly. A man of a certain type, a certain class, he told himself; but he ground his teeth. To have to listen to all this half-witted bigotry; really, it was intolerable. But he was trapped.

  “Enoch Powell! Now there vos clever man. Like you—he also knew Greek and Latin. And he vos right! He vos right! What they did to him; said he vos racial prejudiced—he vos not racial prejudiced, this vos Britain losing its vay, losing its blessed mind. Look around: everything he said come true. They should have listened to him. Now everyone racist if so much as peep against terrorists, vimmin in black veils, wiolence in street. Ve all racist! Unless ve blow pipple up! Then ve untouchable!”

  Russell sat frozen in horror.

  “This country, when you think vot it once vos, it make me wery sad, a tragedy. Once it had empire that went round vorld, you know? Everything down drain after empire. India, that vos high point, jewel in crown, that vos ven Britain had power. Then it knew how to deal with pipple who were backward, primitive, it knew how to turn them one against the other; those wery clever leaders, those British, but now…now British on their knees begging and pleading. No more British lion. Mrs. Tetcher, now there vos lioness. You liked Tetcher?”

  “Well, I…”

  “Vot a voman! She strong voman, powerful voman. She understood who were real enemies of her country. Not like now, namby-pamby milk puddings in blessed government. Boys, children—ach. She brought down communist Soviet Union. You realize that? She knew, she understood. Soviet Union evil, evil. These wery, wery bad pipple. They kill thousands, millions of pipple. They send to labor camps, Siberia. Secret trials; no justice. Now they all scream about human rights. Ach! Secret police knock on your door in middle of night, drag you out of bed, children screaming, they beat you, shoot you. Many, many pipple just disappear. Communists, these were animals. And they vanted to take over vorld. Mrs. Tetcher, she knew this. She destroyed them.”

  His hands, his whole body trembled. He was most passionate when he spoke about communism. About Nazism, he was silent. That figured, Russell thought. The Holocaust was just too raw for him. So he projected all those feelings onto communism. A man like that—simple, not sophisticated—maybe to him it was all much of a muchness, whoever was taking freedom away. He thought of his own grandfather, who had been in the Bund when he arrived in Britain as a penniless refugee at the turn of the 20th century. He thought of his own parents who had met at meetings of the Young Communist League.

  “Well, we all were in those days,” his mother had said. “If you were against the fascists, you were with the Communists.”

  His father remained a socialist all his life, but Russell suspected that Sylvia may have voted Liberal.

  “There were many reasons why the Soviet Union fell. I don’t think Mrs. Thatcher can claim the credit for winning the Cold War all by herself.”

  “Vot! You don’t like Mrs. Tetcher?”

  It was as if Russell had suggested the sun would not rise the next day.

  “You are also communist?”

  Not for the first time, Russell contemplated the sheer cliff-face of intellectual limitation among the lower classes.

  One day, he was left alone in the front room for a long time after he arrived. Kuchinsky was nowhere to be seen. He heard raised voices; a door slammed shut. Eventually, Kuchinsky came in with the manuscript in its usual box. He wouldn’t meet Russell’s eyes.

  “My vife, she vorried you telling pipple about this book. She think you make trouble for us.”

  “No, I haven’t told anyone about it. Really.” Russell said. “But anyway, you’re not going to get into any trouble over this. You may make a lot of money from it, you know.”

  “My vife, she say you make off vis money, you cheat us.”

  Russell was becoming increasingly alarmed. Kuchinsky was restless, distracted; his mind seemed to be elsewhere. It was as if he had suddenly got bored with the whole business of translating the book.

  The atmosphere was worsening almost daily. Russell sat at the table, his body now tensed against Kuchinsky’s querulousness. The possibility was now uppermost in his mind that Kuchinsky would snatch up the book and order him out of the house.

  The old man didn’t want to know what was in the book. He wanted only to hear that it was what he thought it was, a prayer book—more than that, it seemed, a book with mystical, even magical qualities. The more Russell tried to tell him what he was actually uncovering and which was so entrancing him, the amazing detail of how the English Jews of the 12th century had lived, the richness of their interior lives, the poetic quality and literary gifts of Eliachim of York and his tender love story, the more Kuchinsky’s face darkened.

  The unprompted political ramblings dried up. Kuchinsky would sit silently staring at Russell, which was worse. He developed a calculating look, as if he were weighing something up. Russell was pretty sure he knew what that something was.

  He had to do something.

  One day, he pretended to start at what he was reading. In an instant, Kuchinsky was by his side, breathing heavily.

  “You have found something?”

  “Well, I’m not sure exactly yet, but…well, yeah, Eliachim seems to be saying here that, um, God is guiding his hand to write, and, er, um, that his words are a blessing and that anyone who reads them will be blessed, along with all in his house and his children, and they will heal all sickness and bring wealth out of poverty and turn swords into ploughshares…”

  He knew he was going dangerously over the top now, but the effect was electric.

  “I knew it!” cried Kuchinsky in triumph. He clapped his hands together and danced a little jig on the spot. “I knew it! I knew this vos holy book, sacred writing, vord of God!”

  He fell to his knees and looked up towards the grimy ceiling, his face radiant. The door opened and his wife entered.

  “What’s happened?” she said in alarm. “I heard shouting. Joseph, are you ill?”

  Joseph. It sounded strangely formal to hear him called by his full name. The more homely Joe suited him better.

  “Is all true, just as I thought! The book is vord of God! Is miracle in our house! All this time it vos protected, I knew it was for purpose! Now it vill bring us good fortune!”

  Veronica looked keenly at Russell.

  “Is this true? Is this what you have found?”

  He was disconcerted by her gaze—startled now, not hostile, but still wary.

  Under cover of shuffling his books and p
apers, as if to refer to the words in question, he dropped his eyes to hide his insincerity.

  “Well, the language is really…remarkable,” he said with as much conviction as he could muster. “Very striking…there’s clearly the feeling that this…that this is, ah, inspired, ah, inspired by a higher power of, um, some kind, no question.”

  She was still staring at him.

  “And that the book will bring good fortune to all who read it?”

  He set his chin. “Sure,” said Russell. “Certainly. It’s all there.”

  He could see she didn’t believe him. Still, after that the atmosphere eased. Kuchinsky stopped looking calculating and sat looking expectant and excited instead. Every so often, Russell threw him a few more such verbal bones. Once embarked upon the lie, he found it quite easy to continue.

  Meanwhile, the worm of doubt that had been there since the beginning was growing. Was the whole thing a forgery? To have such a treasure fall into his lap…it just all seemed too good to be true. Kuchinsky’s story was plausible enough; family heirlooms did get passed down through generations. But just how had a 12th century English manuscript ended up on a Polish farm?

  The risk he was taking was enormous. The world in which he lived revolved entirely around reputation. You had to be one of them, and for that everything had to fit. The right kind of people needed to talk warmly of you, to want to drop your name as “very bright” or “mega-talented” because the right kind of people kept referring to you in the right kind of papers or websites. It produced a consensus of approval, this golden club, a penumbra of protection; but there could be absolutely no backsliding. One misstep and you were out. Making allowances would reflect too badly on everyone else for any of them in the club ever to take that risk.

  Of course, he reflected as he jogged doggedly round Parliament Hill Fields, he didn’t have to expose himself to any risk at all. He could just do what Kuchinsky wanted, translate the manuscript, tell him what it said and then walk away. No one would be any the wiser about whether it was genuine or not.