AHMM, April 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "Yeah, well, sometimes the truth sounds mean. Look, let's not a minute longer than necessary, okay?"

  * * * *

  Roger clumped down the stairs to the basement and flicked on the light switch at the bottom. He saw a couple of kayaks, some bicycles, the furnace, and shelves with cardboard boxes piled up high. But a light bulb or two from the ceiling must have burnt out, for it was dim at the rear. No matter. He headed toward an open door down at the other end of the basement, then stopped, thinking he heard the sound of a car pulling up.

  * * * *

  Wendy pulled in before Uncle Julian's place and shut off the engine. She shivered. She could also easily think of a hundred other things she would rather be doing . . . but Uncle Julian was family. Oh well.

  She got out of the car, her feet crunching on the dead leaves. Trish joined her as they looked up at the house.

  Trish rubbed her hands and said, “I still don't know why you don't like the place. Remember how Uncle Julian used to pull surprises on us? Like the time he caught that duck and brought it into the living room. Or the night of the lunar eclipse, when he came in with a flashlight and told us a UFO was hovering over the lake."

  Wendy frowned. “Yeah, he was a barrel of laughs. C'mon, let's get this over with. Life has enough surprises, you don't need somebody making them up just for fun."

  * * * *

  Roger listened, but the sound of the car engine was gone. Did somebody stop? Maybe he should take a quick look back upstairs and . . .

  No, let's keep going, he thought. Let's see what this joker had for rifles. If we're lucky, we might get a couple of hundred for each one, and if he's got four or five . . . man, that would be so sweet.

  He crossed the threshold of the open door and tripped on something and fell down.

  * * * *

  As they went up to the house, Trish stopped and said, “Did you hear something?"

  Wendy said, “No, I didn't. Did you?"

  Trish said, “A noise. Like a thump. I don't know..."

  Wendy continued up to the door, saying “Oh, knock it off, will you? You're trying to scare me now."

  * * * *

  There was a click as the door to the small room swung shut behind him, and a light flickered on. He got up and went to the door and tried to push it open. It was made of metal, and lacked a doorknob and handle.

  And it was locked tight. He tried to put his fingers along some sort of edge, but the damn thing was flush to the wall. No grip, nothing to hold onto, nothing to pull.

  "Damn,” he said, and he looked around the small room at the concrete walls and ceiling. There were a few boxes and a strange looking chair, and a table, bolted to the floor. He saw then the broken cord he had tripped over and saw that it led to a contraption on the wall that seemed to release the door once it was tugged.

  On the table was a note, with the same handwriting from the note from upstairs. It said:

  * * * *

  Dear thief,

  Welcome to my home. I know about all the neighbors’ homes you've robbed over the years, and how you've frightened the good people whose homes were broken into, their belongings stolen.

  So welcome! You're here until I return to let you out . . . and have a comfortable wait! I come up every weekend to check on the property. In the meantime, there's plenty of food and water for well over a week, and a chemical toilet. So have a good wait, and as my blessed mother would say, years ago, now you have time to contemplate your sins.

  — Julian Drake

  * * * *

  Roger crumpled up the note, with a string of obscenities, and threw it to the floor.

  * * * *

  Wendy noticed a pane of glass near the door was broken, but before she could say anything, Trish grabbed her arm and said, “C'mon, let's go down to the dock, see what's out on the lake."

  She didn't like the look of the broken pane, but she let her sister pull her around.

  They stepped out onto the dock, looking over the clear, cold waters of Lake Winnipesaukee, where a few motor boats were cruising.

  Trish said, “Wendy, look . . . look at that view. Isn't it something?"

  Wendy nodded, seeing the trees, the hills, the islands, the other homes lining the shore, remembering all the times she had taken in this view, growing up. “Yeah, it's something."

  And then, suddenly, tears came to her eyes, and she said, her voice quiet, “You know . . . Uncle Julian's gone . . . and, well, we never kept in touch that much, but he was always here, you know? You knew you were always welcome here. And this place . . . and now it's too late. He's gone, his house will be put up for sale, and . . . oh, I'm not making any sense."

  Trish put her arm around her and said, “It's okay. Regrets, that's all, am I right?"

  Wendy nodded, now recalling the funeral, the flag over the casket, and that guilty ache that she should have been a better niece, a better person to her uncle, for yes, it was now too late.

  Breathing hard, Roger looked at the boxes of food and bottled water and sat on the edge of the table. Okay, if that's how you want to play it, old man, we'll be ready for you. Or anybody else who comes through that door.

  He reached into his back pocket for the clasp knife and opened it up, testing the sharp blade with his thumb.

  God help anyone who opened that door, he thought, because he was getting out of here, one way or another.

  * * * *

  Trish gave her sister a squeeze of her arm and said, “He was a bit of a nut, our uncle, wasn't he?"

  "That he was.” Wendy laughed. She took some breaths and felt better.

  Trish said, “But he did want the best for us, Wendy. You know that. Look, let's get up to the house . . . and speaking of guilt, I wish we could have gotten here earlier."

  Wendy said, “I know, but we got here when we could. Which is more than I could say for our male cousins."

  And as she turned on the dock, something caught her eye, a piece of rope that didn't belong. She walked to the end of the dock and said, “Trish, come here, look at this.” She pointed to the side of the dock, where an aluminum skiff was moored, swamped with water and old leaves. There were rusted bits of something in the bottom of the skiff.

  "Boy, look at that,” Trish said. “How long has it been here, you think?"

  "All winter, it looks like."

  Trish said, “Who do you think it belongs to? I don't remember Uncle Julian owning a skiff like that."

  "No idea."

  Trish said, “Well, leave it for now. Let's see what surprises Uncle Julian left for us up at the house."

  Wendy smiled and walked up the path into the spring sunshine with her sister. “Knowing Uncle Julian, I'm sure it's going to be a big one."

  Copyright © 2010 Brendan DuBois

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Fiction: BETWEEN MINKHE AND MAYREV by Kenneth Wishnia

  * * * *

  * * * *

  If the rich could hire others to die for them, the poor would make a very nice living.

  —Yiddish proverb

  * * * *

  We needed eight more Jews to make a minyen, so we said our minkhe prayers without the final prayer for the dead. But our little ceremony was cut short by the sound of robbers ambushing a wayward traveler a short way up the road.

  The rugged passes near the frontier offer easy concealment for thieves and highwaymen, so we said a quick prayer for protection. But when a woman's scream was suddenly cut off, I abandoned the safety of our tiny patch of neutral ground and ran ahead, rounding the bend in time to see a group of men hurling the uncooperative woman into the rushing waters, her cloak flapping behind her like a blackbird's wing. I took three steps toward the robbers, but they turned on me like a pack of wolves and blocked my passage.

  Rabbi Loew was still fifty yards behind, ambling along with his staff like an old gray shepherd. So I knelt and grabbed a handful of gravel and flung it through the air toward the gang of thieves, while cursing them with these
words:

  "Adam Havah Abton Absalom Sarfiel Nuriel Daniel!"

  The words were completely harmless, but these mountain folk are a superstitious lot, and they scattered like mice.

  I rushed to the river's edge. The poor woman was pressed up against a rock about twenty yards downstream, kicking and fighting the current, but she couldn't do much with her hands tied behind her back and a gag stuffed in her mouth.

  I raced along the riverbank, pulling off my cloak, and splashed into the icy waters, razors of ice nipping at my ankles and knees as I waded deeper. I was almost halfway across when I slipped and was swallowed by the maelstrom. The current pummeled me, throwing me against the rocks. It felt like someone was smacking me in the face with an ice axe, but I regained my footing and finally reached the woman. I pried her away from the rock and gathered her in my arms, but her body was completely limp, her waterlogged clothes dragging us down. The other bank was closer at this point, so I fought the current and carried her to the river's edge, and laid her on the grass.

  I climbed out, pulled a short knife from my belt, and cut the ropes binding her wrists. She was still unresponsive, so I propped her against a rock, pried her mouth open, and put my fingers down her throat. She had swallowed the gag, but I was able to get a piece of it. And the bastards must have used an oily rag, because when I pulled it out of her, the evil thing was black and blue and slippery. Then she vomited up all the water she had swallowed and started gasping for air, and shivering with cold.

  By now, Rabbi Loew had crossed the narrow bridge and was coming toward us, holding my cloak and a small bundle that presumably belonged to our new acquaintance. I seized my cloak from him and wrapped it around the woman's shoulders, rubbing her arms to get the circulation going while the rabbi rustled about gathering driftwood for a fire.

  She babbled a bit about how “they” were coming for her, so I put my hand on her shoulder to steady her and said, “I think we're on the Polish side of the border now. So you're safe."

  "S-s-safe from what?” she said, her teeth chattering.

  "Safe from the Germans."

  Rabbi Yaakov of Toledo says that delivering a person from the Eretz Gezerah, the Land of Calamity, his term for the German Empire, is the same as saving their life.

  She saw the faded circles on our cloaks where we had recently worn our yellow badges.

  "You're Jews?” she said, suddenly quite lucid.

  Her green eyes sharpened, and I waited for the inevitable curses, but they never came.

  Good. That would make it easier for us. The Sages say that the value of a single human being is so great that all but three of the six hundred thirteen Commandments may be suspended for the sake of one life. So we built a fire to warm ourselves, even though Shabbes would arrive shortly with the setting sun, and we didn't have much time to spare. It was already the twelfth of Iyar of the year 5352 (April 24, 1592 on the Christian calendar), in the fourth year of the reign of King Sigismund III of Poland, Protector of Jews, and we only had a couple of weeks to get to Poznan, where Rabbi Loew was set to rejoin his family and become Chief Rabbi.

  Rabbi Loew rested his bones on a jagged rock and lent me his cloak. The strange woman thanked him for returning her bundle, and after some clumsy handling and averting of the eyes, the two of us sat around the fire watching the steam rise from our drying clothes. The Maharil advises us to dress in tattered clothing while traveling to avoid attracting robbers, but I only had one set of clothes that were already quite tattered, so it was a moot question with me.

  As the dirty blonde hair clinging to the woman's broad forehead dried and the color came back to her face, she told us her name was Castava, or Kassy for short.

  "So you are a Bohemian,” Rabbi Loew observed. “Your name harks back to the warring maidens of pagan times."

  "Right. And I've just been kicked out of my homeland.” She drew my cloak tightly around her shoulders and inched closer to the fire.

  "Really? It looked more like you were thrown out,” I said.

  "You have a strange sense of humor, Jew."

  "The Germans thought so, too,” I said, since our people had recently been cast out from all but a handful of German cities, and expelled from the Kingdom of Naples, where we had lived since the days of the Roman Empire. (In other words, the ancient pagans were more tolerant of our presence than their Christian successors, but that's another story.)

  "We've been exiled from so many places, we've lost count,” I said. “The last town was so crowded even the cemetery was twelve layers deep."

  "You're from the Prague ghetto?"

  I caught the rabbi's eye. Our Bohemian friend was clearly more knowledgeable than most.

  She told us she had worked as an herbalist and healer in the Protestant neighborhood of Bethlehem Chapel—that is, until she was brought before the Inquisition.

  "On what charges?” asked Rabbi Loew.

  "What do you think?"

  Rabbi Loew lowered his eyes and nodded his understanding of the madness that had been sweeping through the German Reich.

  "Don't you know that ‘midwives surpass all others in wickedness'?” said Kassy, quoting the Inquisitor's handbook.

  "And that's what this business of tossing you in the river was about?” I asked.

  "The only reason they didn't try to burn me alive was because they were too lazy and stupid to gather up the wood,” she said with a cynical chuckle.

  I told her not to worry, that she was among Jews now, and the Jews were experts at making the best of a bad situation. “That must be true,” she replied, “for I have heard that when God sent the Plague of Blood against Pharaoh's people, the Israelites learned to profit from it by selling fresh water to the Egyptians that they alone could supply."

  "At least according to the Midrash Tanchuma," I said, uneasy about what she might be implying. I mean, I'm sure it worked in the desert, but you couldn't make money selling bottled water to people nowadays.

  "We'd better find our way to the nearest village before dark,” said Rabbi Loew, leaning on his staff and rising to his feet.

  "I don't even know your names,” she said.

  She had heard of the famous Rabbi Loew of Prague, of course. The great Maharal was known throughout the Four Lands, but my name was new to her. Actually, it was pretty new to me too. I was still getting used to the “Rabbi” part.

  "Thank you for saving me from a cold and lonely death, Rabbi Benyamin. I know that you didn't have to. A lot of men wouldn't take a risk like that for someone they don't even know."

  I said, “God commands us not to stand idly by when your neighbor is in danger."

  Especially if your neighbor is a pretty blonde woman.

  * * * *

  Still, we thought it best to keep off the main road for a while. So we found a narrow path through the forest and hurried through the brambles, stepping over the fallen trees and catching our clothes on thorn bushes so tirelessly devoted to ensnaring us they belonged in one of those fairy tales about an enchanted castle with a sleeping princess in the topmost tower. Dead branches crackled underfoot as we stepped into a clearing, then Kassy's hand flew to her mouth as she stifled a cry.

  The early spring grass was trampled in all directions and bespattered with blood. In the center of this lay the body of a nobleman who looked like he had been torn apart by wild animals. The nobleman's clothes were shredded and his flesh had bled out from countless lacerations.

  Kassy crossed herself while I said a silent prayer. Then I spat twice, and we approached the body.

  This nobleman had fought bravely for his life. A series of elongated drops of blood in the dirt tapered to sharp points, indicating that he had kept moving, maneuvering quickly even while wounded. And a section of clean, white shirt under the blood-smeared brocade suggested that at least one part of his doublet had been bloodied before it was sliced open. But the mortal blow was of an immense savagery—at least a half pint of blood had spurted onto the grass from a main artery,
and the blow had sent tiny dots of red nearly fifteen feet from the spot.

  Kassy's green eyes followed every movement as I unsheathed my knife and carefully lifted the hem of the nobleman's garment with the point. I searched the surrounding area the same way, gently flattening the grass with the blade of my knife so as not to get any of the blood on myself.

  "No sign of a weapon,” I said.

  "You mean, besides the one in his right hand?” said Kassy. The lifeless hand still gripped an ornate sword with a few drops of blood smeared on it, but there was no way of telling whose blood it was. The victim's fourth finger bore a gold signet ring with a double-headed eagle on a red and white striped background.

  "I mean no sign of the weapon that did this to him."

  "Oh, the signs are there,” said Rabbi Loew. “They are written all over his body. We just have to find the author of these wounds."

  I poked around the large puddle of blood, but I didn't find anything worth reporting, except that the nobleman's boots were missing.

  Kassy watched me curiously. “Tell me, Rabbi Benyamin, isn't it your belief that the blood of a dead man is ritually unclean?"

  Very few Christians know such things about our ways, so I took a moment to answer her accordingly. “The Mishnah says that the blood that gushes forth while a man is still alive is unclean, while the blood that drips from a corpse is clean. But Rabbi Judah disagrees. In fact, he says the opposite. So we figure it's better to play it safe and treat all such blood as unclean."

  "It's like something out of the tales of Oddo the pirate,” said Kassy, surveying the carnage. “They say he could raise storms and blind his enemies with fantastical visions of flashing swords."

  "Where'd you hear that?" I asked.

  "I didn't hear it. I read it in the works of Saxo Grammaticus."

  It was the rare woman who could read, at least among the Christians, whose literate females were mostly cloistered nuns or countesses with a flair for dabbling in poetry. I had only heard of this Grammatical Saxon once or twice before.

  "Saxo Grammaticus? What does that mean? The German Who Can Read?"