by Marge Piercy
“If we become as violent as they are, we are no longer the people of the book and the people of the name,” he says, staggering along almost blue in the face with effort.
But Chava’s other suitor, Yakov, is eager to fight. He has produced an old sword from the secondhand store and is sharpening it, flourishing it in the air in a manner that looks more dangerous to himself than any enemy. It turns out that Bad Yefes the Gambler knows how to use a sword. He gives a fast class for the few who have found some manner of long knife or sword, including the butcher and his assistant. In the street between the barricade and the houses, the pudgy butcher and his knock-kneed assistant parry each other’s blows with sharpened sticks, lest they kill each other in practice. Bad Yefes the Gambler shouts encouragement and pointers. Yakov practices with Samuel the old-clothes man, who has produced a hidden army sword brought to him in a bundle of dead man’s clothes.
Chava has volunteered herself as a messenger to run to the different parts of the line, to carry news and instructions. “I always won footraces when I was a girl,” she boasts. “I know every part of the ghetto. I know almost as many people as my grandfather.”
Joseph is fascinated by the Maharal. As busy as Joseph is, piling up paving stones as a barricade, giving brief instruction in the use of the club, waving his own spiked homemade mace, he cannot help staring at Rabbi Loew, commanding like a general. The old man has never fought in his life, never been in an army, never watched a battle, let alone taken part in one. Neither has Joseph. Where did the Maharal find the fighter in Joseph? Out of what was Joseph shaped, if not out of the Maharal? Like father, like son, he thinks ironically, aware of how angry his saying that would make Judah.
The Maharal abhors violence. Joseph has heard his despisal of war, for he says no nation has a right to dominate or rule another. Each people has their own road, their own destiny to fulfill. The world is imperfect and requires repair so long as any people is under the rule of any other. The Maharal bases these ideas on the kabbalah, Joseph knows, although the Golem’s Hebrew is barely adequate to the prayer book, the siddur.
Judah’s is one of the first voices to argue for self-determination as an important principle among nations, this lean spiky old man commanding the street with a wave of his long arm. Yet Joseph can see that Judah has the makings of a fine general, for he possesses the instinctive power to command, the ability to inspire people to follow and obey gladly, the rhetoric to rouse others to effort, and a clear original mind with which to confront the situation, brainstorm strategy, work out a choice of tactics.
The Maharal has made a decision to collect all those who cannot or will not fight into the synagogues, where they can be more easily defended than if they are scattered in every cubbyhole in every warren of the ghetto. Chava is sent with her mother, Vogele, and her father, Itzak, to spread the word, and as they go they commission others as messengers. The people will be collected. If they are to be massacred, then they will die together, as before. It is understood that if they are not burned to death, if the mob does not set the synagogues on fire, the women will kill themselves when the doors fall. It is standard operating procedure, a kind of death every Jewish woman has heard about in stories since childhood. Chava thinks briefly of her son, Aaron, who is with her husband’s family. She is glad he is safe, but frequently she misses him. Giving him over to them was the price of her escape.
She wants to go to Eretz Israel more than anything in the world. It is a passion. Women never make this aliyah, but she will, she will, she swears it to herself every Shabbat. If she dies today in a quick pool of blood on the beautiful old floor of the Altneushul, she will never see Israel. She decides she will stay with the fighters. She would rather die here than with the weeping women, the screaming or silent children, the davening old men.
Someone has already taken the ax from the shed in the cemetery, but in the kitchen of her grandfather’s house there is a sharpened spit. She pauses to sharpen it more, puts in her belt the best carving knife, and returns to the spot where Bad Yefes the Gambler is teaching swordsmanship. She does not expect him to teach her. It would be improper for him to teach a woman. But she can watch and learn and practice. She believes in choosing her death, if given the opportunity. Perhaps, Chava thinks, I am not brave but a bigger coward than the other women. I fear death by fire more than death by steel. The idea of burning alive makes her shudder; Judah himself has had nightmares since he heard of the auto-da-fé of Bruno. She clutches her sharpened spit tightly and practices parries and attacks.
Joseph keeps an eye on her. He cannot decide if he wishes she would go back and hide with the other women or if he prefers to have her nearby, where he can kill anybody who goes within ten feet of her. He must protect Chava, and he must protect the Maharal. He must save the community. These are his commandments. Today he fulfills his deepest duty, that for which he was created from clay and breathed into life.
Yakov brandishes his old sword a little less awkwardly. He is learning. “Why don’t they come? It’s agonizing to wait.”
Joseph is puzzled. Why hope for what will kill and maim? He has been created for this battle, yet he would not mind if it never came, and he is in no hurry—not to fight, not to die. The wan April sunlight breaks watery through scudding clouds. When the sun disentangles, it is warm on his face. Then the clouds wrap it around again, and the wind glides damp from the river. He realizes he has no idea if he can die. He can be injured, yes, he has been in enough fights and sustained enough cuts and blows. But he heals quickly. Can he die? He is the only combatant today who has such a doubt. He would like to ask the Maharal, but Joseph suspects that Judah would not care for his asking such a question. In any event, Chava and the Maharal are quite mortal, and so is everybody else whom it is his duty to protect—with his life? With whatever he has been given—if not life, then energy, breath, strength; it does not matter finally. What he has he will spend today.
In spite of the fear that leaks like a smell from them all, when the bells toll noon and they break bread together on the barricade they have thrown up, they share a common spirit. They are cracking jokes; here and there someone is singing. This is one day when everyone in the ghetto says we and means it, when they are truly a people together. All the petty rivalries and old feuds are swept away; Samuel the tailor shares his wine with his rival Wolf Karpeles the peddler, to whom he has not spoken all year. People smile at each other, they smile at Joseph. It is only a moment’s pleasure, because soon the sound of the procession drifts toward them. The women on the roofs cry out, for they can see over the ghetto wall.
“They are coming with crosses and torches. Hundreds of them,” Chava’s mother, Vogele, calls down. Itzak is in the Altneushul, but Vogele has taken to the rooftop. “They have pikes and swords and clubs.”
A younger woman shouts, “They’re carrying an enormous cross. They’re singing hymns. I see musketeers too!”
They can hear that for themselves now, loud ragged singing in Latin. Joseph has no idea what they sing, but it sounds both sad and menacing.
“The emperor has stationed a few soldiers outside the gate,” Vogele calls. “Perhaps fifty in a row.”
Through a crack in the gates, still chained together, Joseph peers out. So much for our begging help of our dear father the emperor, the revered protector and constant milker of my people. Fifty soldiers to contain a mob of five hundred. Thanks a lot. Joseph exchanges looks with Chava, who shrugs. I might as well have kept the emerald and given it to her. What would she want with it? Nothing, to be truthful. She is a woman who sets store by jewels of the mind, not trinkets. I hope that the prince is murdered for that jewel by some even more mercenary relative. I hope that green stones grow in his bladder and his hard heart. May he piss emeralds the size of hens’ eggs and die.
“Jews of Prague,” the Maharal cries as he tries to clamber up a barricade. Joseph lifts him easily and holds him up to speak. His voice is clear and penetrating as always, no longer as strong
as once it must have been, but a voice that commands attention even against chanting and the shouts of an angry worked-up mob. “Today we must defend our gates. Today we must stand as a shield, the Magen David, between our people and certain death. They don’t expect us to fight. If we stand firm, we can discourage those who don’t like killing Jews enough to die for the pleasure. Let us put ourselves in the hands of the living ha-Shem and fight like holy men and demons.”
“Now take my grandfather to the Altneushul to safety,” Chava says to Joseph, who is still holding the Maharal. “Take him now.”
Joseph lifts the Maharal high in the air and bears him through the streets. “Put me down, thing!” Judah mutters, unwilling to shout in front of everyone. “Davar,” he curses, which means both word and thing.
“If I have to look out for you, I cannot fight well,” Joseph says. “The people in the Altneushul need you more than the fighters. You shouldn’t be in the presence of death, and you must pray for us. Your prayers are strong as my fists.”
“Prayer doesn’t work that way,” the Maharal says quietly and sadly. “It makes the heart and mind strong in belief, but it doesn’t keep one leaf from falling from the tree. Still, I will pray.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
Desert Apples
Shira had enough credit by now so that she and Yod could have gone west by zip, but she preferred mass transportation that left no trace. They decided to ride the tube all the way to a terminal relatively close to the Y-S enclave where Ari had recently been staying. Shira did not dare take the tube to the station at the Nebraska enclave, for fear she would be recognized by a grud, guard or monitor. Furthermore, the enclave entrance required a palm print.
The tubes crossed the continent in about twelve hours, minus stops. An hour tube ride was a standard commute for day laborers, who did not live in the corporate enclaves. Thus the enclaves could be several hundred kilometers outside the Glop or similar areas—El Barrio in the Southwest, the Jungle on the Gulf Coast—and still draw on cheap labor pools. They were heading for Omaha, off the direct transcontinental route. They changed in what was still called Chicago, although it stretched from Green Bay to halfway up the far side of Lake Michigan. Residential use of much of what had been Michigan and Wisconsin was restricted, since these northern lands still got rain. The soil was not as thin as farther north. Agricultural land was strictly regulated. They weren’t going to get any more of it, and much had been damaged, paved over, eroded or poisoned before the protections had been established.
The Rural Zones were areas that the multis did not own or control. Agribusiness was blamed for the Great Famine. Now all soil farming was based on organic practices and biological controls. The pesticide residues still found in every living being contributed to the mass sterility that plagued Shira’s generation. Using poisons or allowing them in contact with the soil or the water table was an offense punishable by death, enforced by the eco-police of the Norika Sector government. Shira wondered what life was like for the small holders of the Rural Zones, but tourism was not encouraged there.
In Chicago they left the tube and locked themselves into a rented cubicle in the underground warren of the station. With Yod, she felt safe in the six-by-eight room with its bunks and minimal toilet facilities. They were close enough to Lake Michigan for the shower to function, tepidly and sporadically.
It was like trying to sleep in the works of an old and noisy machine, an antique with gears and levers clanking. The coming and going of the tubes shuddered through the walls. Above, behind and from all sides came the mutter and shriek of voices. Footsteps ran. Bodies landed hard. A stink of rotting matter and unwashed flesh in dirty clothes thickened the air, along with cooking smoke and something acrid and chemical. She monitored the air. The oxygen was close to minimal, but what could she do about it? She had to take off the filter for a while. “Yod, didn’t I see you massage Malkah’s shoulders when we were working all night in the lab?”
“I’m programmed to give a mean massage, Malkah says.”
She smiled. Her face felt as if it were flaking off. “I don’t think I’ve smiled since we left home.”
“Is that conversational, or do you wish to know? I can replay.”
“I just mean that I’ve been very tense. This is the first time we’ve been alone. It isn’t that I feel safe here—only an idiot would feel safe in the middle of the Chicago Glop in a tube station cube.” She undressed and lay on the cot, on which she had already spread her bag so that she would not touch the mattress.
Yod knelt over her. His hands began working the pain and stiffness from her muscles. She groaned. “Am I hurting you? Should I use less pressure?”
“It’s not a bad pain. Do it the way you were.”
“Isn’t all pain bad?”
“You feel pain, don’t you?”
“Not as you do. It’s mental. It’s more of a warning signal coming on and demanding I notice it. It’s disagreeable, but I can turn it down.”
“I could have used that ability in childbirth. I could use it every day.” She drifted into pleasant surrender to the shaping, releasing hands. She must have fallen asleep, because she woke with the room almost dark—as dark as it got. A spattering of shots outside. She saw no reason to investigate. Loud voices gave way to footsteps running. Shots, more distant. Then a single whining moment of laser fire. The monotonous ka-blam ka-blam of canned drumming vibrated the floor.
Since she did not see him, she called his name. She was immediately frightened, even though she was certain he was just above her, in the top bunk. He answered at once.
“How long did I sleep?”
“Nine hours, twelve minutes.”
“I never sleep more than seven hours, never!”
“Never does not apply any longer.” He jumped down neatly, turning at once toward her.
“Since Ari was born, I’ve never slept a night through.”
“You fell asleep at twenty twenty-eight local time, and now it is five-forty. Are you hungry?”
“We have rations in the green pack. First we need to disinfect and filter some water.” She took her second tepid shower while the water for reconstituting their food trickled through a unit the size and shape of a big carrot. Diseases hit the Glop, ebola one year, a new killer flu the next. Viruses previously confined to the tropics now flashed through the cities with the speed and deadliness of a fire storm.
“Shira…If I were human, I’d know if the fact that you haven’t dressed again means that you wish to have sex. Or is it warm for you in here?”
“It’s warm, yes. I hadn’t actually thought about sex, but the water isn’t through yet.” Outside, loud voices argued about payment. In here, dense sticky air, but a feeling of momentary nest, ease, safety. “Do you want to?”
“Of course.”
She watched him undress, swiftly, piling his few clothes in a stack on the upper bunk. She asked, “Why of course? You might not be in the mood. Why should I assume you’re willing?”
“But I don’t have moods.”
“But you don’t always want to have sex.”
“With you? Why not? Hypothetically I might consider it inadvisable if we were in a dangerous situation. I doubt you’d propose it then.”
“You mean you’re always ready?” She laughed, half in embarrassment. “Does this apply to everybody? Could you do it with anyone at any time?”
He put his hand on her bare shoulder. “Shira, I grasp the pragmatic basis of modern monogamy: if I don’t do it with anybody else, you won’t. That’s agreeable to me if it is to you.”
They lay down on the narrow lower bunk. She traced his sleek back with her palms. Next door, something heavy fell. Through the ceiling came a sound as if someone were swinging a pickax on the floor. “Emotions, but no moods?”
“My emotions are reactive, mostly. But they grow stronger with use.”
“Is that good?”
“I don’t think it was intended, but yes. Life is less boring. I ha
ve something to care about now besides following instructions. I have a friend, I have a lover. Soon we’ll have a child to care for, and then I’ll understand the mystery of human childhood.”
“Don’t! The odds on getting Ari back are lopsided against us. Don’t say that, ever—don’t speak as if it were done when I can’t endure the thought that we may fail.”
“My speaking one way or the other has no effect.” He ended the conversation by beginning to kiss her.
Sometimes Yod’s behavior was what she thought of as feminine; sometimes it seemed neutral, mechanical, purely logical; sometimes he did things that struck her as indistinguishable from how every other male she had been with would have acted. His cloture of the discussion of Ari by kissing her was one of those times. She was not annoyed, because she preferred confining conversations about Ari to logistics, tactics. She did not like to talk about success or failure; it made her superstitious. She preferred to proceed with her gaze averted slightly to the side of her target.
“Because you’re programmed to please, do you ever feel used when we have sex?” she asked him, remembering sex by rote with Josh.
“Aren’t you programmed too? Isn’t that what socializing a child is? I enjoy, Shira, never doubt that. If I’ve been programmed to find your pleasure important and fulfilling, don’t women try to reprogram their men that way?”
