AHMM, April 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  The woman stumbled in the darkness, then the door swung open and the moonlight struck her pale eyes like a watchman's lantern.

  It was as dark as the bottom of an old cooking pot inside the dyer's cottage, so the squire strode into the room holding a torch aloft, unconcerned about blackening the ceiling. He examined the four corners of the room to make sure that no evil spirits lurked there that might threaten His Lordship's life, limb, or property.

  "What is this about?"

  "Where is your husband?” the squire demanded.

  "Right here,” said Horshky, stepping into the flickering firelight and pulling a short woolen coat over his nightshirt. His fingernails were covered with faded blue stains, and as he fixed his gaze on us, I immediately saw that he had the same bright blue eyes and defiant bearing of his half brother, Mateusz. “What do you want?"

  "Andrzej Horshky,” the squire announced, “you stand accused of the murder of Sir Tadeusz Strekov."

  His wife let out a strangled yelp.

  A gust of wind blew in through the open door, making the torch flame dance and shiver.

  "What?” Horshky said.

  "Let's see your hands."

  Horshky stared at his hands as if he didn't quite know what to do with them. His palms were just like any other man's.

  "Look how he hesitates,” a guard interjected.

  "That proves he's guilty!"

  "I haven't done anything wrong,” said Horshky. He was eerily calm for a man in his position, like a bored prompter reading a cue line from a play he'd seen a hundred times before.

  Lord Strekov's men sniggered and shook off his words, then Rabbi Loew stepped in from the shadow's edge and into the circle of light.

  "Perhaps he truly feels that he did nothing wrong,” said the rabbi. “Because he believes so strongly that he was betrayed by his victims that his hatred has taken on a life of its own."

  "What victims? What are you talking about?” said Horshky.

  "Look, there's no point denying it,” I said. “We know all about Father Szymon's ruling that you had no right to a share of Lord Strekov's estate since he didn't marry your mother within the bonds of the Catholic Church."

  Horshky stood there silently. But silence is also speech, as we say.

  I went down the list, ticking off the main points: “Sir Tadeusz was next in line to inherit the manor house and the surrounding land, including the dyeing mill, Jan Barwicz ran the mill with an iron hand, and Father Szymon blessed the arrangement."

  Horshky stared right through me to a spot about a hundred yards off in the deepest part of the woods.

  "At least tell them I had nothing to do with Sir Tadeusz's murder,” said Kassy.

  "And how would I know anything about that?” said Horshky.

  "Was Sir Mateusz next on your list of victims?"

  But Horshky denied everything. “Lord Strekov has many other bastard children in the region. Why aren't you questioning them?"

  I could have answered that with two words. But Rabbi Loew handed Kassy his staff and told Lord Strekov's men, “Take this woman to the graveyard and lead her to Father Szymon's grave. There you will allow her to pound on the earth three times to summon his spirit and bring it back here to testify at this moment of supreme judgment."

  Kassy said, “But Rabbi, the law—"

  "The law has established a very clear precedent in this case. Rabbi Karo has ruled that it is permitted to question the spirit of a dead man, provided that you do not attempt to conjure the corpse itself."

  Rabbi Loew rarely cited such laws in front of unfriendly Christians, but something in his authoritative manner convinced them. The lord's men nodded, although they didn't look too thrilled about having to escort an accused witch to the graveyard.

  "Don't worry, my mother always told me never to trust a man who conjures the dead,” said Kassy. Then she took the rabbi's staff and left with two of the lord's men.

  Rabbi Loew took a step closer to Horshky. “God commands us to love our fellow man because our souls are all connected. And so we must conclude that whoever hates his fellow man is actually guilty of self-hatred."

  "Fellow man? What did any of my fellow men ever do for me?” said Horshky, as the pounding started outside in the cold night. “What have I got to show for all that wonderful love? This world hasn't given me anything."

  I looked around the room and saw a wife with a kindly face, a hearth full of embers, and a larder that was nearly half full, and a man who gets to breathe freely in the crisp mountain air, unlike so many of us whose lives are restricted to the cramped and fetid ghettos. But obviously Horshky didn't see that. He only saw his lowly position relative to his brothers, and thought that the world had given him nothing.

  "What have I got to show for it?” Horshky repeated, as the pounding grew louder.

  Rabbi Loew nodded, and the squire slipped the manacles from his belt.

  "You've got no evidence against me,” Horshky protested, stepping backwards as the very walls seemed to shake from the pounding.

  The squire advanced until Horshky was practically scrunched into the corner. Then a window smashed and Horshky threw his arms up to protect himself from the flying fragments and stumbled against the door of a cabinet. The door creaked open and a motley collection of shoes spilled out onto the floor.

  His hatred had grown so palpable I could almost feel it walking among us, the floor bending under its weight.

  "There's your nameless evil,” I said.

  As Horshky was led away in irons, Rabbi Loew said that God is present whenever true justice is rendered.

  But sometimes I wonder.

  * * * *

  Rabbi Moyshe Ben Nakhman says that without the Torah, man would hardly be distinguished from a brute beast. And there were plenty of men without the Torah around these parts.

  "The world of men is governed by evildoers,” said Rabbi Loew, looking up at the starry sky as if searching the heavenly spheres for answers. “When I was young, God granted me the strength of a lion to fight for the cause of justice. But in the end, I have failed to make much of a difference. Perhaps one person in a thousand will hear my words and follow the path of righteousness."

  Rabbi Loew was given to such pessimistic comments, so I just said, “It's time to go, Rabbi. Let's get out of this town."

  "Not before we say the mayrev prayer."

  Kassy the Bohemian stood by in silence as we chanted the verses, from Blessed art thou, Lord our God, Who causes day to pass and brings night to the counting of the Omer.

  When we were done, we invited her to come to Poznan with us.

  "There's plenty of work for a wise woman there,” I promised. And she agreed to leave her native land behind and wander the world with us. So we set out on the dark road toward the distant dawn.

  The mystics say that the Messiah will not arrive until the Age of the Four Kingdoms comes to an end, and that the first three kingdoms of Babylonia, Greece, and Rome have already been buried by the sands of time. No one knows the true identity of the Fourth Kingdom, but Rabbi Loew believes that we are currently living under the Fourth Kingdom, meaning the whole era of Christian rule over the lands of the west. And if that's the case, we may have a heck of a long wait.

  Fortunately, there is a Midrash which says One empire comes and another passes away, but Israel abides forever.

  Lord Strekov offered to pay us for our troubles and grant us safe harbor for the night under his roof, but we asked him to pay us nothing and grant us safe passage out of town. His Lordship agreed, with somewhat mixed feelings.

  I thought of his role in creating the monster that had terrorized this remote village, and I prayed that we would not see his kind again any time soon. Copyright © 2010 Kenneth Wishnia

  * * * *

  Glossary:

  Four Lands : Greater Poland, Little Poland, Red Russia, and Wolynia.

  keynehore : no evil eye.

  Maharal : Moreynu ha-Rav [Our Teacher and Master] Yehudah L
oew (c. 1525-1609), famous for the Golem legend surrounding him.

  Maharil : Moreynu ha-Rav Jacob ha-Levi (c. 1360-1427), the foremost Talmudist of his generation.

  mayrev : evening prayer services.

  Midrash : lit. “interpretation"; extensive body of exegesis and commentary on Biblical sources.

  minkhe : afternoon prayer services.

  minyen : a group of ten men required for a full community service.

  Mishnah : book of post-Biblical oral law written down in the second century C.E.

  Omer : the forty-nine days from Pesach to Shvues.

  pan [Polish] : lord.

  poyerisher kop : peasant head.

  pripetshik : stove, hearth.

  Zohar : one of the major works of Jewish mysticism, written and compiled by Moses de Leon (Spain, late 13th century), and first published in Mantua (1558-60) and Cremona (1559-60).

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Fiction: JANGO SAYS by Mark Patrick Lynch

  "I'm Jango,” he says. “Remember?"

  It's clear that I don't.

  "Oh, come on. The other week. Right? Down the street, by the city walls. Petergate. You bought one off me."

  "I'm sorry,” I say. “It doesn't ring any—"

  "But you must remember. It's me. Jango." When he sees that isn't enough and that I don't recognise him, he brings to his face an appealing smile and spreads his hands to jog me along, so that I will make connections in recollection and my synapses will fire and trigger memories of him. “Jango!” he says again.

  Perhaps it's his belief that if he starts to tap dance the memory will come back, and the sun gliding across the yellow medieval walls of the old city will shine on his presence there, illuminating him, and I will remember and say, “Oh, yes. Sorry. How could I forget? Take a seat, please."

  But it's not going to happen, despite the boundless capacity he finds to summon jig into his movements, make merry his quick steps in dull-ended boots.

  I lift a hand and he brings his body to a halt. Somewhere in that indefinable space between us—he standing, dance abandoned, me sitting, waiting for him to leave—we both understand this is over, though it has not yet been said aloud.

  A nervous and edgy need for recognition issues from him like a plea; I try to ensure I radiate a relaxed calm. A gulf separates us.

  "No,” I say across it, shaking my head. “Really, no."

  I'm seated at a round table of slatted wood with scrollwork legs painted black. There are three unoccupied chairs. Before me is my notebook. I'm enjoying my freedom, waiting to be served an English breakfast, though a pot of tea and a white cup and saucer are already here, a small jug of milk and twin sachets of brown sugar, with a steel spoon for stirring. The table is outside the café entrance, nestled with others on a small square of cobbles. An awning flaps like one hand clapping.

  It's a quiet courtyard at this time of day, with only shop and office workers passing by. I'm alone, except for Jango, who is neither kind of worker, and if I'm correct in my suppositions, no kind of worker at all. I choose to sit here and not inside so that after my meal I can smoke a cigarette and go undisturbed. I am not a natural people person, though I'm slowly learning. On the table, as well as my notebook and click-top pen, is a secondhand paperback novel with a broken spine. A breeze chilled by the river lifts the pages every so often in time to the applause of the awning. I will not lose my place because I have not yet begun the book in earnest. It's often the case that I have to reread the opening passages of a novel to find my sympathies coming into line with the author's. Since I was inducted in the rehabilitation programme, I have learned the capacity within myself for empathy has grown. I have rediscovered a part of me I had thought sunken and lost at such a depth that its treasures could never be hauled to the surface again.

  Unwilling to leave, Jango resurrects his shaky grin, showing me his teeth. He has what my daughter Fisher calls “whiskers” on his cheeks. His hair is black and spiky, and in places it is knotted. All his clothes are dark; any colour they once possessed has suffered from too many tumbles in the wash and has long since faded. He stands before me on the acceptable side of scruffy, but acceptable not by much.

  "Aw, now. Seriously. C'mon,” he says and fingers a leather necklace from which hangs a seashell, a miniature conch like a horn. “I can't believe you've forgotten."

  "There's nothing to forget,” I say friendly enough, but not so that he thinks we have a relationship. “I wasn't there, I didn't buy it. Sorry. If I had, I'd tell you. Must be someone else you're thinking of."

  I dip my head from him and pick up my novel, which is one of John Updike's Rabbit books. It's a gesture indicating that our conversation is over as far as I'm concerned. I turn the pages until I reach the opening text and run my sight over sentences, seeing words I've read before but without taking any meaning from them.

  Jango does not move. He does not speak. But I sense his presence. It falls across me like a shadow from an ugly cloud.

  Glancing up at him I smile sympathetically but tiredly, so that a slice of my frustration shows. I say, hoping that this will be the end of it, “I'm sorry, really. But that's it."

  His face is as readable as a child's, and I think of my daughter's upset when she has lost her bear or when bedtime has arrived too early for her. The expressions are the same. But I do not respond.

  When he sees he will get nothing more from me, Jango turns around. His exuberance and dancing spirit are curtailed. I watch his slumped shoulders as he departs. I pour myself some tea and notice it's darker than I would have preferred, but I refuse to dilute its essential essence and adulterate it by adding milk.

  * * * *

  On Friday, the Vikings are back. They have invaded the city again, this time in pantomime plundering and with shouted declamations that tally with the script provided by the historical reenactment people. It is a fun invasion, and pillaging is kept to the comedic. A set of stalls shows genuine archaeological finds dug up from excavations in the vicinity, history from beneath layers of soil. I stand with Fisher at the pedestrian area along Briggate and watch as local television crews film the Vikings, and the tourists clap and cheer and take photographs.

  "Daddy, who's that man?"

  "Which one, sweetheart?"

  "There. Waving at us."

  I look and see the figure she's talking about.

  "That's Jango,” I say coldly and do not wave back.

  * * * *

  I have never cared for water, and yet I find myself in a city famed as much for its floods as its old world streets and buildings, its city walls and museums and gothic cathedral. Water and the deluge is the theme in my head. I have filled one half of my notebook with poetry ideas and have enough to see me clear through another tour and a set of radio engagements. Many of the poems concern flooding, being overwhelmed, which is the nature of the tide that rises too high. It spills over and everything changes. Chaos ensues. If there is a cleansing then it is in the raised waters because afterwards it's only the dredged effluvium that remains and which turns stomachs, sickening those who have to clear it up. Floods do not wash away sins; floods breed sins.

  "It's me. You remember,” a voice says.

  "Jango,” I say, looking up. “I remember."

  "I've got more,” he says. “If you want to buy another."

  He sits beside me, uninvited. We're in King's Square, a good walk from the wide, brown river upon which cruise boats cut wakes like folds upon the water. I'm eating a takeout from the hog roast: a pork sandwich, crackling and applesauce, a can of Irn-Bru to wash it down, wash it away, thinking of liquid and floods. A street performer extracts magic from a sack and juggles fire. There is a crowd that watches only until the end of the magician's performance, whereupon it scatters and thins before he has time to pass his hat around in expectation of coins. A true wizard of high renown could not have made people vanish so quickly.

  Jango materialised out of the crowd to claim the only spare seat o
n the bench beside me. I am not surprised the seat has gone vacant for so long; I know at times I give the impression I would rather be alone, in solitary meditation. Now there are seats for the taking. I drop silver and copper into the magician's hat and he nods his appreciation. Others ignore the magician and his pleas for payment. Even in the midst of extravagance, I note thoughtfully, there is invisibility.

  "I didn't buy anything off you before,” I tell Jango and bite into my sandwich. “You thought I did. I told you I didn't. Now you think I did all over again. It wasn't me."

  "But I've got more now."

  "It doesn't matter to me."

  "You've money, though. You've just given him some.” Him being the magician, who is sitting on a step and building his stage props again, joking with a huddle of teenage girls braving their shyness to cosy up to him.

  Jango says, “You could give me some. Some money. You could give me some money and then you'll have bought one. And I've more to sell now. So you can have one. I'll give it you for money."

  My expression plays in the negative. I drink some Irn-Bru.

  "But why not?” Jango says. “It's me. Jango. Like before."

  "There's never been a before,” I tell him. “You saw me sitting at a table one morning. That's all.” My pork sandwich is finished. The enjoyment of it has been diminished by Jango's arrival and persistence. But I have learned to control the natural riptide of my temper. I distribute the bits of crackling that I've not eaten to the pigeons, which are plentiful and wise to good feeding here, then I roll the white paper bag and its grease stains into a ball.

  "All right. I can do a deal,” Jango says. “Half what it usually is."

  "I don't know how much that is. I don't know what you're selling. I don't need anything that badly that I have to buy it now. If I did, I would have bought it already."

  "Look, a special rate for a regular."

  I laugh. It is a studied laugh that clearly isn't hoisted out of my insides and lifted into the air through levity. The pigeons at our feet, searching for bits of crackling, scatter at my fabricated mirth. But their retreat is only short lived. Hunger triumphs and they, perhaps not so wisely, dare the tempest of my presence again.