Ring of Fire III

by Eric Flint

  “What does it matter what he looks like, Gabriel,” one of the girls, the older one, snapped, her hands upon her hips. Shabbethai pretended he didn’t see her hips or even know what “hips” were. You had to be careful how you looked at girls, especially ones who weren’t Jewish.

  “No Ger-man,” Shabbethai tried in English.

  “Easy game,” Joseph said slowly, smiling at him. “Watch. I show you.”

  Shabbethai watched very carefully, completely involved in the game.

  The boy with the smile Shabbethai liked held a stick and looked determined to hit something or someone with it. Shabbethai was determined to make sure he was not that something or someone to be hit.

  Deborah, 24th of Av, 5394

  (T minus 4 hours 15 minutes)

  “He’s the one who called me a boy when I asked him to teach me Hebrew. Rabbi Yaakov, him.” Jacqueline pointed, indicating the elderly man who was pretending not to see Julie’s car.

  The fact that the good rabbi was doing a very thorough job of pretending that a car had not just appeared a few hours before the Sabbath with Officer Julie Drahuta inside told her a great deal. Maybe she would not need Jackie to identify the boy.

  “Julie, where the hell are you?” the radio blared.

  “Chief.” Julie sighed. “I’ve got Jacqueline in the car and I’m about to talk to Rabbi Yaakov. You might want to modulate your vocabulary, Chief.”

  There was a long, tense pause in which Rabbi Yaakov finally looked over at Julie.

  “What, Officer Drahuta, in the name of God, is your present location, if I might enquire?”

  “Deborah, Chief. I’ll leave the mike open. You’ll probably want to hear this as it happens.” Julie set the microphone on the dash and looked out of the windshield. Rabbi Yaakov looked back at her with a large smile on his kind face.

  The old rabbi shared at least one common trait with her; they both tended to smile while under stress.

  “I believe, Jackie, that the word he used was goy. It’s Yiddish and it means a ‘non-Jew,’ ” Julie said. “I guess their language hasn’t changed as much as English has. Anyway, how you ask is as important as the question. Maybe if you talk to Chana first and show up at one of their Sunday schools, which are on Saturday, you might have better luck than just marching up to someone and telling them to teach you Hebrew.”

  “Chana just glares at me,” Jackie said. “I don’t think she likes me.”

  “Your recitations of Barbara Cartland are rather graphic, Jackie. Chana wants to make sure you are serious. Hebrew is an important language to Jews. It was still being spoken four hundred years from now. The language has survived a lot. Ask her respectfully, Jackie. Now stay in the car.”

  “Wow! I am told Jesus spoke in Hebrew. How many languages do Jews know, you think?” Jackie muttered. “The boy spoke Greek. I’ve never seen a Jew speak Greek.”

  Julie shrugged, opened the door and climbed out of her patrol car. “Good Shabbos, Rabbi Yaakov.”

  “Good Shabbos, Officer Drahuta.” The man bowed slightly. Rabbis didn’t bow easily to non-Jewish women in this century or in one almost four hundred years from now. This was looking more and more serious to her.

  “Is there something special about this Sabbath, Rebbe?” Julie asked, smiling.

  “All are special, Officer Drahuta.” Rabbi Yaakov smiled back.

  Shit, Julie thought. His smile was as good as a red flag. “So special that you have groups of children hunting down by the stream and looking along the road? You haven’t lost something, have you?”

  Rabbi Yaakov looked away from Julie for a moment.

  “Or someone?” Julie continued. “Are you missing a Messiah, perhaps?”

  Fire blazed for a brief moment in the elderly rabbi’s eyes. “Julie, this is time for joke?”

  “Purim is over, Rabbi Yaakov, so I am not joking. I don’t smile when I am joking.”

  “Officer Drahuta...this is a difficult problem.”

  “Why didn’t you come to me? Have we not worked well together? Have we not solved problems together? Have I not introduced you to the other men of God in Grantville? Have there been problems with the consecration of the new place of worship in Grantville? Have the Sephardim not been accepted? Non-Jews gathered money and helped Rabbi Fonseca to move here. Why do I have to learn of your problems from an eight-year-old girl?”

  “Yes, and I thank you, Julie, but this is difficult. Yes, you have been very helpful. We have tried to be helpful in turn. For your help we have thanked God, Julie Drahuta.”

  “You wouldn’t teach me Hebrew,” Jacqueline interrupted. Like her brother, Jackie saw rules as something less “rule-like.” The girl was, in this case, standing on the edge of the doorframe of the patrol car so, technically, she was still “in” the car.

  “Jackie! Zip it!” Julie turned back to Rabbi Yaakov. She noted a loose ring of Jewish residents of Deborah standing just within earshot. “Jacqueline here had a little conversation with a young boy. I can have her describe him to you. She speaks Greek quite well. She and the boy had a short little talk. The boy seems to think he is Sabbatai Sebi and that name appears in a book or two in the public library.”

  Rabbi Yaakov closed his eyes for a moment.

  “He’s from Smyrna. That’s in Turkey...or, well, Ottoman Turkey...or whatever. Doesn’t that make him Sephardic? Am I missing something here? Are the boy’s parents here or in Grantville? Your place of worship is Ashkenazi, I think, correct? Why would the boy be living here? You are looking for him, right?”

  “Shabbethai Sebi’s father and Rabbi Fonseca did not come to agreement on what was to be done about the boy. The father and elder brother are looking for him now,” Rabbi Yaakov stated. “The boy was told not to go to Grantville, so the father and older brother look for the boy here.”

  “Ah. So the boy Jackie saw wasn’t this Sabbatai person. Good, I will be going...”

  “Julie Drahuta, please. This is a difficult matter,” the man almost whispered. “God does not have a son. We must, first, be clear on this.”

  “So, while the adults argue, an eight-year-old boy wanders into Grantville and finds out he’s the son of God all by himself?” Julie asked quietly, aware of the audience.

  “God can not have a son! That is...” Rabbi Yaakov calmed himself. “...that is...that is not right, Julie Drahuta. Do you understand?”

  “I understand, Rabbi Yaakov.” Julie smiled. “I understand that Jews do not believe God may have children. Christians may not be so quick to deny God’s paternity though. If I had known of our guest from Smyrna, I could have at least smoothed over any problems. Now he’s running around in Grantville and you are spending time here in Deborah looking for him instead of thinking about the Sabbath because you told the son of God that he may not go to Grantville. I see.”

  “It is the reason we hoped to handle this matter among ourselves,” Rabbi Yaakov sighed. “And I would like this very much if you do not call him the son...in my presence.”

  “That I can do, Rabbi Yaakov,” Julie said.

  “The Torah is very clear on who God is, Julie. This matter that you have brought with you from the future is one to be discussed carefully and completely. It is a matter of religion, not...the protection of children. The boy is safe...do you think? That is the important thing now. Right now. He is very smart. He is very smart, but he is a boy.”

  “I am pretty sure nothing has happened to him,” Julie said.

  “How to understand this matter of Messiah is a matter for men of God to determine,” Rabbi Yaakov begged. “This should not be made into a joke.”

  “Yes. Theology is easy. Have faith and believe in God,” Julie said carefully. “I have a Christian library aide thinking the son of God was in her library reference section. She calls a Christian dispatcher and now we have people in Grantville who are wondering if the son of God is wandering about Grantville. The chief is a bit upset. He feels someone should have at least discussed the appearance of such a
boy, if for no other reason than crowd control. He wants to know what I was doing to allow this to happen. The people of Grantville wish to meet this boy who is not the son of, well, Him. This has become a problem of sociology and mob psychology and trust me on this one, sociology is much more complicated, Rabbi Yaakov. You can have faith in God, Rabbi, but to have faith in humans requires something like insanity.”

  “Will harm come to the boy?”

  “Worse, the crowd may believe him.” Julie shook her head and almost, almost, laughed. “And then what the Torah says or does not say about God and if He may have children or not will become a moot point. One of the little secrets of Christianity is that Jesus was a Jew. I learned early that to say that brought most religious arguments to an end. Sometimes the argument became centered on me, but I’m not eight, Rabbi. Next time, please, talk to me. Now I have to tell my chief that the Messiah is wandering around Grantville. He doesn’t like his Friday afternoons to vary from the regular round of drunks and brawls.”

  Rabbi Yaakov closed his eyes and if he prayed then it must have been a very, very serious prayer, indeed.

  “So, Chief...” Julie grabbed up the microphone and began, “about this ‘Messiah’ thing; you’re gonna laugh so you might as well get it out of your system now...”

  Somewhere in Grantville, 24th of Av, 5394

  (T minus 2 hours 10 minutes)

  “Shut up, everybody! It’s the phone!” the boy named Joseph Drahuta shouted over the growing argument. “Hello? Mom? Yeah, we’re all here. Kubiaks, too. Blaise came over, too. No, Mom, Blaise is fine. Where are you? Oh. Sure. Yes, Mom. I was making a snack. No, we won’t make a mess. No. Sure. See you when you get home. Sibylla’s right here. You wanna talk to her?”

  There had been a time when Shabbethai would have been very curious about a “phone” but after the library and now the boy who could translate Greek into English, all he wanted to do was hide.

  “Sibylla, Mom wants to talk to you,” Joe shouted and Blaise translated. Shabbethai wanted very much to tell the boy to stop translating everything but Blaise wasn’t Jewish so he remained silent.

  “Yes, Mother?” the older girl, named Sibylla, said.

  It took a certain kind of faith to believe that there was a real person talking back. Shabbethai hunched under the drone of Blaise’s idle translation of almost everything being said in the room. It had been a rough and tumble game of stick ball. The smooth feel of the ball, made out of something called rubber and called a Pinkie, had almost meant that he had not thrown it in time for an out.

  English was a curious language.

  Shabbethai was curious about how the phone worked. He was curious about why the Jews of Deborah looked at him funny. He was curious about whether the French boy could understand Greek. Look where that curiosity had left him.

  The boy named Gabriel, the one with the smile Shabbethai didn’t want to see, asked if he was Jewish and Shabbethai said yes because lying never solved a problem and Blaise had translated his answer and now...

  “Joseph, Mom wants me to make dinner,” Sibylla stated very firmly to everyone present. “Mom won’t be home until late and she put me in charge.”

  Sibylla placed the phone down on its cradle. Shabbethai looked sadly at the phone then glared at that boy, Blaise. What sort of name was Blaise? He sort of looked like that girl in the library who had translated that English book into Greek and destroyed his life.

  “Did you tell your mom you have a Jew in your house?” Gabriel Kubiak asked, looking at Shabbethai, not smiling.

  Blaise kept translating and Shabbethai kept wondering about the game of stick ball and how he was ever going to face his father and the Jews of Deborah...or any Jew for that matter.

  “So what if there’s a Jew in the house?” Joseph frowned. “What’s wrong with being Jewish? Isn’t like he’s a Croat or something. Jews are nice people. I like Chanukah and the candles. One of Mom’s friends is this lady named Chana. She’s nice and she’s Jewish. She comes to the house. She even ate here!”

  Joseph Drahuta, once Blaise showed up to play stick ball and translate English into Greek, had introduced Shabbethai to Gabriel Kubiak and his sister, Dorothea. They both were orphans and their foster mother was Joseph’s father’s sister.

  Once the French boy who knew Greek told everyone that he, Shabbethai Zebi, was Jewish, Gabriel started watching him almost like the Jews of Deborah had been watching him.

  Shabbethai wondered if people back in Smyrna knew about him, too.

  “Jews are worse than Croats,” Gabriel muttered (and Blaise dutifully translated). “My father told me that Jews started the wars. Jews are evil.”

  Shabbethai didn’t know what or who a Croat was. He hoped they weren’t a type of Jew.

  “Mr. Kubiak didn’t say anything like that.” Joseph laughed. “You’re crazy! Your dad doesn’t care if someone is Jewish. I have known him longer than you.”

  “I think he means his other father,” Sibylla said quietly, glaring at Gabriel. “I think Gabriel means his German father. His dead German father. I think Gabriel forgets that it was not a Jew who killed his first father. I think Gabriel should forget more of the past and remember more of the future here in Grantville. He owes his new mother and father that much!”

  “My father said Jews aren’t to be trusted,” Gabriel looked at Shabbethai and Shabbethai weighed the danger in that look. “He said Jews were witches and sorcerers. They poison water and steal babies.”

  Shabbethai flinched as the words were translated and wished, once again, that he hadn’t met the French boy who knew Greek while at the same time thanking God that he had. This would be worse if he could understand none of it.

  “It does not matter,” Joe’s younger brother Ulrich, who was adopted like Gabriel and Dorothea and Sibylla were, said. “Shaba is in Grantville. Everyone is safe in Grantville. And he plays stick ball well. You are mad that we beat your team, twice!”

  “But he is a Jew.”

  “Shut up, Gabriel,” Joseph said, defending him. Incredible! “The kid ain’t a witch. You’re just mad he hit that ball over your head. You thought you could win by letting me have the new kid and we beat your butt. You’re just a sore loser!”

  Shabbethai turned to look at the French boy who had ruined everything with his knowledge of Greek. He depended on that translation now. If he wasn’t very much mistaken, things could go real bad at this point. Even if Gabriel were the only one who hated Jews, he probably had friends and would Joseph Drahuta defend Shabbethai Zebi, the Messiah, the son of God, when Gabriel brought friends who hated Jews, too?

  “Gabriel Vogel Kubiak! I will tell your mother you said that!” Joseph’s sister, Sibylla, shouted from her position of authority by the phone that was now lying on the small table near the door to the kitchen.

  “You know it’s true, Sibylla,” Gabriel stated. “You were German once, too.”

  “Who says I am not now?” Sibylla shouted and the argument began, in German, fast and angry.

  Shabbethai knew that arguments were rarely good things for Jews. Somehow, when there was arguing and there was a Jew, the Jew became a target. He had seen that in Smyrna. Would that happen here? He was, after all, the only Jew available and everyone knew that because of the French boy who knew Greek.

  “There will be no food until you stop saying horrible things about people! And that includes Jews who play better stick ball than you!” Sibylla yelled.

  Shabbethai needed no translation. A girl, now standing in front of the door leading to what could only be a kitchen, said two words that Shabbethai understood completely, no and food.

  “He can’t eat regular food anyway,” Gabriel declared. “All I said was that he was a Jew. I heard you gotta be careful with Jews and food. They poison it.”

  “If you think you’re going to be poisoned you can leave,” Joseph shouted. Shabbethai noted that Joseph’s younger brother, Ulrich, shouted encouragement to his brother. “You’re just mad that Shabbet
hai helped us win! You’re just a sore loser!”

  “All I am saying is that he is Jewish and you should be careful around Jews. What do they plan in their secret meetings, in their communities set apart from good Christians?” Gabriel frowned.

  “I see, Gabriel Vogel. Take your sister and go home to the Vogels, your first mama and papa, and eat there,” Sibylla stated. Shabbethai wasn’t sure why this seemed to strike Gabriel dumb. The older boy looked unable to speak. Dorothea looked ready to cry.

  “Mama, our new mama, said we gotta stay here.” Dorothea looked very upset. “Mama, the mama who took us in when we would have starved, said she’d come and pick us up after work. We gotta stay at Auntie Drahuta’s house. And I don’t care if he’s a Jew. I want dinner. Our first Mama and Papa are dead and we can not go to them for dinner. That was mean, Sibylla. Your parents are dead, too. You go to them!”

  Gabriel seemed unable to answer back. Shabbethai could see that there were words that wanted to come out but, for some reason, they did not.

  “So, was it Catholics that killed your Protestant parents or Protestants that killed your Catholic parents? Or did anyone care to figure it out before they killed them? You of all people should know how foolish your words are, Gabriel. So what if he’s a Jew? There is religious freedom in Grantville. Go. Leave Grantville with your ‘he’s a Jew’ thoughts. There are people out there waiting for you, Gabriel Vogel. Just make sure you tell the right people the right religion or you may learn what it feels like to be a Jew. I have seen how Jews are treated and I will have nothing to do with that. Nothing!”

  Blaise’s translation into Greek extended into the silence after Sibylla stopped talking.

  Gabriel looked at Shabbethai but without anger. Was there, perhaps, a touch of shame, Shabbethai asked himself?

  “Come,” Sibylla waved at Shabbethai and Shabbethai walked toward her as she opened the door to the kitchen. “Show me what you can eat and I will make it for you. Gabriel can watch, for all I care.”

  Were Jews truly welcome in Grantville? Would his welcome change if they discovered he was the son of God? But there was no son of God? Was there?