by Nomi Eve
The story of the murder is as follows. Six years after they moved to Jerusalem, on November 10, 1851, Herschell had completed his morning studies and was in the parlor of the family house eating his lunch. After just a few bites, he took seriously ill. Doctors were called immediately, as was British Consul James Finn. It was quickly ascertained that the rabbi’s lunch had been poisoned.
Immediately, Jacob Silverman and his son, seventeen-year-old Anshel, were suspected of the crime. This was for two reasons, both having to do with the fact that Herschell was a very wealthy man. First, there was the matter of Jacob Silverman’s bad investments. Silverman had wanted Herschell to invest money in his factory for the production of phosphorous wicks. At the time, phosphorous wicks were used to kindle fire. They were considered a technological revolution. A dry wick would be laid on a flint and then struck with a stone hammer. The impact produced sparks that set the wick on fire. Rabbi Herschell, conservative in matters of money, refused to contribute to the venture. Silverman invested in the wicks and lost a large amount of money— not because the technology was deficient, but because his investment partners absconded to Syria with the bulk of the business’s cash. But perhaps more important was the matter of Herschell’s recent marriage.
Herschell had recently married a young woman named Chasia. Chasia was at least forty years younger than Herschell! According to family lore, she was very beautiful. Together they had a son who was still a baby when Herschell was murdered. It was widely suspected that the Silvermans murdered Herschell in order to prevent him from making a new will in favor of Chasia and her child. But the murderers were too late—on his deathbed, Herschell dictated a new will to British Consul Finn. In the new will he left a fortune to Chasia and her son.
After a lengthy trial, the defendants were acquitted for lack of “irrefutable evidence.” However, they were always popularly considered guilty. So much so, that even today, more than 140 years after the crime was committed, at large family gatherings, if any descendants of the Silvermans are present, someone from our branch of the family will inevitably point to them and humorously whisper, “Murderers!”
Chasia Herschell inherited her husband’s fortune. The only part of the inheritance that remained in our family was a pair of silver candlesticks willed by Herschell directly to his eldest daughter, Esther, my great-great-grandmother. Today, the candlesticks are in possession of my distant cousins who live in Jerusalem.
Not long after her husband’s death, Chasia left Jerusalem with her young son. They moved to Sefat where she remarried. There is a legend in our family that in addition to the inheritance, Chasia also made off with Herschell’s “mystical treatise.” And since her destination was the city of the Ari—Sefat, the seat of Kabbalah—it would seem most fitting if she had, in fact, brought the rabbi’s work to the source of his inspiration. But of this there is no proof.
I WRITE:
For years before this particular visit of his daughter’s family, Eliezer found that he was unable to sleep. Night had become a wide place holding him prisoner. And he could not, either with potion or prayer, manage to find the key. He would settle into bed, turn over the pillow so that it was cool, and then shut his eyes. But always, instead of sleep, he would see the story of the murder condensed into a single repeating image. The image was of the young widow, Chasia Herschell, his step-grandmother, sitting in an open carriage in front of the house on Rav Pinchas Street. The widow Herschell, a woman he had never met. Young when married. Young when widowed. An old neighbor had once told him, “Beauty like a vine, hers was; it climbed all over you, made you feel covered with precious flowers.” “Flowers.” Eliezer mouthed the word as he sat up in bed. Chasia was sitting in the carriage looking toward the house. Recently widowed, she was leaving Jerusalem for Sefat. It was a stagnant image. The horses were the only part of the picture in motion, their front hooves in the air. “Sefat,” Eliezer whispered, “where prayers float amongst the houses like gentle clouds, but clouds not obscurant at all.” The words were those of a famous contemporary mystic.
Such was the nature of Eliezer Schine’s insomnia. There was an image embedded in his soul, and he could not dislodge it. The nights were all the same. He would lie awake, not wrestling with the image, but receiving it. It was, he knew, some sort of foreign correspondence, a message sent to him from far away. “Only,” he groaned, “it has gotten stuck in the conscious cogs of my inner machinery.” He groaned again and turned onto his side, and then onto his other side. But he could not sleep, no matter the position. He was so uncomfortable. The night ticked away.
Several weeks into the insomnia, Eliezer decided to examine the image closely, so he closed his eyes and peeked into the carriage. Chasia’s child was lying next to her, a baby in a traveling basket covered with blankets. The baby, he knew, was doomed. It would die several months after Chasia’s departure, of scarlatina. Eliezer puckered his lips and leaned toward the infant in his mind. He was very confused. But he kissed the air anyway. And somewhere in the night of this city, or that one, a child cooed. After her baby died, Chasia married a successful dye merchant. Whenever Eliezer imagined Chasia’s dye merchant, he pictured a slight man with dark eyes whose fingers were stained, each a different color. Eliezer breathed deeply.
On a whim, he got out of bed and pressed a hand to his ear and jumped up and down on one foot, and then the other. But the image would not come out. He shook his head so hard that the room began to spin and he felt nausea in his face and belly. When he lay back down again, shaking, he was embarrassed by his mechanical attempt at dislodging the disturbance. But, he reasoned, he could not be blamed for trying. He finally fell asleep somewhere just before dawn.
Several hours later, a very tired Eliezer Schine rose from bed and went to his window and looked down to Rav Pinchas Street, but he did not see the carriage there. “No,” he mused, “it is in my head only.” Shuffling over to the washstand he dipped his hands in the cold water and splashed his face. Then he turned toward the window with his face still dripping and asked the emptiness, “What am I, my Lord? A quarry for your sighs?” For several moments he stood there, feeling the image embedded like a family fossil, a petrified piece of the past that had gotten lodged in him. “Indeed,” he thought, “flowers.” Eliezer reached for a towel and patted his face with it. Then he began to say his morning prayers.
After it had plagued him on and off for almost a year, a very, very tired Eliezer Schine began to think that he needed a new strategy. He realized that he could not dislodge the image, that it was stuck fast in him. But that he could do what he came to call “his duty toward it.” This duty consisted of a combination of investigation and aggressive imagination. He would seek the events that led up to Chasia’s departure. In time, the image and its attendant story saw that their host really was trying his best to accommodate them, and so they gave Eliezer back his sleep.
MY FATHER WRITES:
My father told me that in addition to Eliezer’s “preoccupation” with the murder story, what he remembered most about those yearly visits was that he and his brother, Moshe, loved to run on the walls around the Old City. They would run for hours, exploring, playing, or just horsing around. I once asked my father if he had been scared to run around Jerusalem after the riots. But he said that life quickly went back to normal, and that the city streets were filled once again with both Arabs and Jews.
My father and Moshe would run on the walls almost every afternoon of their visit. The walls, which were built in the sixteenth century by the Ottoman sultan, Süleyman the Magnificent, have six gates. Eliezer once told the twins a story about the Lions’ Gate. He said that the lions carved in the gate symbolized a pair who played an important role in the city’s history. Süleyman’s father, the first Ottoman sultan, had threatened to raze Jerusalem. But a pair of hungry lions had appeared to the sultan and scared him off. The lions remained in the city as stone sentinels against future such threats. My father remembered being terrified of lions because
of this story. He would always walk a wide circle around a lion’s cage in a zoo.
MY FATHER WRITES:
In school, Zohar was good in history and literature, and Moshe was good in math and science. Zohar and Moshe used to take each other’s tests in their best subjects; as a result both always had good grades.
At the age of five, Moshe was ill and knew that his mother was about to come and give him castor oil, which he obviously hated. So, in the last second, he switched beds with Zohar. When their mother came, not only did she force Zohar to take the medicine, but she also hit him for telling her that he was Zohar and not Moshe.
I WRITE:
An optimist and a lover in his youth, Eliezer Schine had aged into a not-quite-so-optimistic old man, but he prided himself on the fact that he was still every inch the lover he was born to be. His dear wife was now dead. But when she died he had set himself seriously to the task of loving other things. He loved his daughters and his sons-in-law, he loved his city, he loved his old friend Bartok’s spicy cooking, he loved his house. As he got older Eliezer became known in the neighborhood as a good fellow, a man neither too earnest in his prayers nor too lax in his worship, a wise friend, a perfect neighbor, the sort of safe, genial putterer with whom young mothers often left their children while they ran to the store. When his own grandchildren were born, Eliezer felt his love for them well up. What always astonished him about finding new loves was that they never took the place of old ones. They simply added more to the world’s store of affection. When the twins were babies he rocked them to sleep, one in this arm, one in that arm, while marveling at their tiny bodies.
On the day that the family was due to arrive Eliezer woke up smiling. Stretching his arms, he cracked his knuckles and climbed out of bed quickly. He did not put on his regular clothes. Instead, he put on a special pair of pants reserved for exercise and a loose-fitting lightweight shirt that he had bought himself many years before in the shouk in Jaffa. When he was done dressing, he patted down the pockets on his baggy trousers and said “humph!” The pockets were too puffy for his liking, and he wished he had another pair. Still patting, he said his prayers briefly. Then he walked down the stairs and out into the tiny courtyard behind the kitchen.
There, in the company of a stray chicken, Eliezer jumped up and down twenty times while flapping his arms this way and that. Next, he put his hands on his hips, and twisted his old torso that way and this. Then he touched his toes ten times, and reached for the sky ten times. Finally, he executed a grand finish with eight astonishingly deep knee bends. When he was done, he smiled and patted himself heartily on his old chest. He was breathing heavily, but at the same time, he could feel his blood sparkle with vigor. “Indeed,” he said to himself (and to the chicken), “I’ll run those walls, no problem.”
When they were babies, Eliezer had carried them. When they were toddlers, he had held their hands and watched as they stumblingly navigated the chinks and twists in the elevated path. Now they all three raced along the top of the wall together, Zohar and Moshe running ahead, the grandfather who was quite fit for his age following after, his pace jaunty and purposeful.
They followed the wall as it encircled the different quarters of the city. Each day they ran a slightly different path. They never went the whole way around, because the wall was so very long—but they always doubled back again over favorite parts, so people got used to seeing them. And by the time the boys were in their teens, the threesome had become rather famous. A kind of aerobic emblem, a lively, moving addition to Süleyman the Magnificent’s magnificent wall. Tolerated by Christians, Armenians, Arabs, and of course by their fellow Jews, they ran wherever they wanted.
First came the boys. Brown hair flopping, blue eyes glinting. They were so beautiful, so identical, so charming. When Moshe and Zohar ran by, people from all four quarters forgot that they lived in a place whose soul was so divided. And then twenty yards behind came the old man. Fists clenched, arms pumping, lower lip thrust out as if in a pout, a supremely entertaining old man in his baggy big-pocketed pants. The Arab bookseller who spotted them running behind the Lions’ Gate wanted to know, “What makes an old man run like that?” Theories abounded. This one said the old Jew ran for the future. That one said, “No, can’t you see, he runs for the past.” That one said it was boredom, of course. Another that he ran to cure heartburn, numb limbs, sour breath, sore teeth. In certain neighborhoods, betting pools began. But the real reason Eliezer Schine “ran like that” was never discovered.
SUNDAY, LATE AFTERNOON
The boys sprung happily out of the carriage and into their grandfather’s arms. Avra and Shimon hung back, shaking the distance of the journey out of their stiff backs and legs. But soon they, too, were enveloped. The old man wrapped his arms around his dainty daughter and her muscular husband. But then he stopped himself mid-hug, pointed to his outfit, and told the boys that they had exactly forty-three minutes until the setting of the sun. Within seconds the boys and their grandfather could just be seen disappearing under the split half arch, Moshe in the lead. Avra and Shimon, standing on the steps of the house of Rav Pinchas Street, watched them go, laughing.
As they ran, all three waved at this neighbor and at that shopkeeper. People were glad to see that the boys were back in Jerusalem and that Eliezer was back to his grandfatherly tricks. Moshe was still in the lead. Zohar was several paces behind him. Eliezer smiled with pride. He was aware that his identical grandsons were extremely handsome. He was also aware that their double image on the golden wall, against the orange-and-red-and-pink setting Jerusalem sun inspired awe in the different communities. He too felt awe.
MOUNT OF OLIVES, FROM THE WALL
SUNDAY EVENING
Eliezer eyed both boys with a wide glance before he began speaking in a soft voice. “My grandfather was murdered, you know.” Zohar and Moshe looked back at their grandfather, their glances not quite as wide as his, but their attention truly all given. They nodded. Eliezer pointed to the indentations left on the rug by the long-sold peacock chair. “It was here,” he explained, “that my grandfather ingested the poison.” Eliezer pursed his big lips and nodded his head back and forth.
It was always the same. Every year on the first evening of their visit, after they had run the walls and returned home and eaten supper, they would gather in the parlor and Eliezer would retell the story. He told the boys that Chasia and Herschell had lived “here in this house” and that Chasia and Herschell had had one child, “a baby boy.” According to Eliezer, Rabbi Herschell had been not only a brilliant scholar but also a very wealthy man. And Chasia was “rich in her face, yes, a stupendous beauty.” At this point he would hold his own face and say with lilting pathos, “Oy Gut in nu! Oy veys mir!” Oh our God! Oh woe is me! “My beloved mother’s sister’s evil husband,” he seethed, “a cursed man named Silverman and his cursed son named Anshel killed Grandfather Herschell by poisoning his lunch! And why did they do it?” Herschell would look at one boy and then at the other. Then he always paused and breathed deeply. When he spoke again Zohar and Moshe always joined in, “The Silvermans murdered Grandfather Herschell,” they all three would say, “so that Herschell wouldn’t make a new will in honor of the beauty and her babe.”
There were clippings and old photographs. Court transcripts and several pieces of yellowed paper that Eliezer insisted were original pages from the diary of James Finn. Pages on which Finn presented the “clearest evidence” that the Silvermans were indeed the killers, their hands stained with kin blood. The twins surveyed the evidence. They read the clippings, and spent the days of their vacation walking behind their grandfather in the approximate footsteps of the murderous grandson, Anshel Silverman. They stood by the side of the sufferer’s “actual deathbed” with their eyes averted, their hands clasped behind their backs. They sorted through the dusty remnants of what had once been the old man’s robust collection of books. As they did these things, they knew that they were witnessing something simultaneously ina
ppropriate and grand. And that this something had taken up residence, making their grandfather only a tenant to the landlord prose, the living story. It seemed to both boys that while this creature was certainly interesting, it wasn’t at all mindful of the house. The house was dusty and dark. Half-grand, half-decrepit no more, its decrepitude was creeping up and its grandeur was drawing to a close. But still there was a softness, a sweet mellowness to the air there that was not at all uncomfortable.
Every year after the original tale had been told with identical drama and identical detail, Eliezer would serve his identical grandsons a small helping of tantalizingly different information. His soft hands pointing to Herschell lying on his deathbed, “wearing a blue cap and a nightshirt with antique buttons.” Pointing to Anshel Silverman, “who in his youth had a fondness for pet rabbits and a talent for math.” Each year the clippings grew more and more faded. Each year the details grew more elaborate. At first Chasia was simply “slim and sweet.” The next year she had “a beautiful voice.” The next, she “often went about the house singing operas of the old Italian master, Verdi.” Eliezer would hum a few bars with his eyes closed. The boys never contradicted their grandfather, they never pointed out his blatant anachronisms or little inconsistencies.
