Eifelheim

by Michael Flynn

  “May you taste them soon. Is your vessel yet ready to depart?”

  A parting of the soft-lips. “You tire of my company?”

  “Never that, but there will be… difficulties should you remain much longer.”

  “Yes. I have heard you consort with demons.” Hans’ lips gaped and he made threatening gestures. “Perhaps I will fly to this Strassburg and frighten the bishop into surrender.”

  “Pray, do not.”

  “Rest easy. Soon, your ‘demons’ shall trouble you no more.” He hunched forward, as if poised to leap, and stretched forth his arm. “I see movement on the Bear Valley road.”

  Dietrich shaded his eyes against the distance. “Dust,” he said at last. “Use your far-speaker and alarm Baron Grosswald. I fear he must hide his people once again.”

  * * *

  At first the travelers were shadows against the westering sun, and Dietrich, waiting in the road astride his rouncy, heard the weary clop of the hooves and the whining complaints of the axle well before he could discern their features. But as they closed, he saw that the man astride the jennet wore a fringed talith and curled his long, graying hair into elaborate ringlets. It needed no yellow star on his cloak to identify him. A second man, meanly dressed and both sharper of feature and darker in complexion, and wearing his hair in two thick, black braids, slouched upon the wagon bench with a servant’s resignation. The awning overhanging the wagon shielded two women garbed in veils.

  The Jew noted Dietrich’s garb and said, with the briefest dip of his head, “Peace to my lord.”

  Dietrich knew that Jews who were strict observers of their Law were forbidden to greet or to return the greeting of a Christian, and so by ‘my lord’ the man had meant in his heart his own rabbi and not Dietrich. It was a deft stratagem by which he could observe both the innumerable laws of his tribe and the conventions of courteous discourse.

  “I am Malachai ben Schlomo,” the old man said. “I seek the lands of Duke Albrecht.” His voice reeked of Spain.

  “The Duke disposes a fief nearby called Niederhochwald,” he told them. “This is the road to Oberhochwald, held by the same Herr. I will take you to him, if it pleases.”

  The old man brushed with his fingers, a gesture that meant to lead on, and Dietrich turned his horse toward the village. “Have you come from… Strassburg?” Dietrich asked.

  “No. Regensburg.”

  Dietrich turned to him in surprise. “If you seek Hapsburg lands, you have come the wrong way.”

  “I took what roads I could,” the old man said to Dietrich.

  Dietrich brought the Jew to Manfred’s hof, where he told his story. The blood libel had sparked riots in Bavaria, it seemed, and Malachai had been forced to flee, his home burned, his possessions plundered.

  “That was infamous!” Dietrich exclaimed.

  Malachai dipped his head. “I had suspected so; but my thanks for the confirmation.”

  Dietrich ignored the sarcasm and Manfred, much affected by the man’s woes, bestowed sundry gifts on him and conducted him personally to the manor house in Niederhochwald, where Malachai would await a party of the Duke’s men to escort them safely across Bavaria to Vienna.

  * * *

  The one place in Oberhochwald where the Jews would not betake themselves was inside the church of St. Catherine, so many of the Krenken had hidden themselves there. Dietrich, entering to prepare for the Mass, spied the gleaming eyes of Krenken perched among the rafters. He repaired to the sacristy and Hans and Gottfried followed. “Where are the others?” he asked them.

  “At the camp,” Hans told him. “Though it is warm now, they have grown soft these past months, and find the woods less congenial than the village. We, in turn, find their company less congenial, and so have come here. The Kratzer asks when they can emerge.”

  “The Jews depart tonight for the Lower Woods. Your folk may return to their labors tomorrow.”

  “That pleases,” said Hans. “’Work is the mother of forgetting.’”

  “A difficult mother,” Gottfried said, “with so little food to sustain one.”

  This puzzled Dietrich, the Lenten fast being long past. But Hans held a hand out to silence his companion. He hopped to the window, from which he viewed the village. “Tell me about these Jews and — their special foods.”

  Gottfried had turned to the vestments and appeared to study them, but in that head-halfcocked way that showed he was also listening closely.

  “I know little of Jewish foods,” Dietrich said, “save that some, like pork, they shun.”

  “Much like us,” Gottfried said, but Hans again silenced him.

  “Are there other foods, which they eat, but you do not?”

  By the stillness of the Krenken, Dietrich knew that the question was important. Gottfried’s comment, with its implication of judaizing tendencies, troubled him. “I know of none,” he said carefully. “But they are a very different folk.”

  “So different as Gottfried from me?” Gottfried turned from his inspection of the Mass vestments and flapped his soft lips.

  Dietrich said, “I see no difference between you.”

  “Yet his folk came once to our land and… But that is the foregone-time, and all has changed. You may have noticed that Shepherd speaks differently. In her heimat, what we call grandkrenkish is little used, so the Heinzelmännchen must twice translate. By us, you and Malachai seem much the same, save for the hair and the garb — and the food. Yet we overheard that your folk attack them and drive them from their homes and even kill them. It cannot be this usury I hear of. As thought-lacking as it is to kill a man because you owe him money, it is doubly so to kill a man because you owe someone else money.”

  “Rumors of the well-poisonings have outrun the pest, and men do mad things from fear.”

  “Men do foolish things.” Hans ran his finger down the edging that held the glass light in the window. “Does killing their neighbor stem the ‘small-lives’ that make disease? Is my life longer if I have shortened another’s?”

  Dietrich said, “Pope Clement has written that Christian piety must accept and sustain Jews; so these massacres are the work of sinful and disobedient men. He contends that Jewish and Christian learning make one whole, which he calls ‘Judaeo-Christian.’ Christendom issued from Israel as a child from a mother, so we must not anathematize them as we do heretics.”

  “But you do not like them,” Hans said. “You have shown it so.”

  Dietrich nodded. “Because they rejected the Christ. For so long as the Savior was to come, the Jews were chosen by God to be a light to the nations, and God placed many laws on them as a sign of their holiness. But once the Savior was come, their mission ended, and the light was given to all the nations, as Isaiah prophesied. The laws that set them apart were void; for if all peoples are called to God, there can be no distinctions among them. Many Jews did believe, but others clung to the old Law. They incited the Romans to kill our blessed Lord. They killed James, Stephen, Barnabas and many others. They sowed dissension in our communities, disrupted our services. Their general Bar Kochba massacred the Jewish Christians and drove many into exile. Later, they betrayed Christians to Roman persecutors. In Alexandria they lured Christians from their homes by crying that the church was on fire and then attacked them when they emerged; and, in far-off Arabia, where they ruled as kings, they massacred thousands of Christians at Najran. So you see the enmity is of long standing.”

  “And those who did these deeds are still alive?”

  “No, they are dust.”

  Hans tossed his arm. “Can a man be guilty of a deed done by others? What I see is that there stands a limit to this charitas that you and Joachim preach, and enmity may be returned for enmity.” He struck the window frame repeatedly with his forearm. “But if vengeance is the law, why did I leave the Kratzer?” This outburst was greeted with silence by both Gottfried and Dietrich. Hans turned from the window. “Tell me I have not made a fool’s choice.”

 
Gottfried handed Dietrich an alb of white linen. Donning it, Dietrich recalled that it represented the garment with which Herod had draped the Lord to revile him as a fool.

  “No,” he told Hans. “Of course not. But the Jews have been enemies for generations.”

  Hans turned from the window to face him in the human manner. “Someone once said, ‘Love your enemies.’”

  Gottfried turned once more to the table, he said, “Father, you have worn white vestments of late. Should I lay those out?”

  “Yes. Yes.” Dietrich turned from Hans, his thoughts in turmoil. “St. Ephraem is a doctor of the church, and so: white, which is the sum of all colors and signifies joy and purity of soul.”

  “As if such ritual mattered,” said Brother Joachim from the doorway. He stepped into the room. “You have acquired two sacristans, I see. Do they know their tasks well? Do they know with which fingers to touch and hold the holy armor so that you may gird yourself to battle the devil and lead the people victorious to the eternal Fatherland?”

  “The sarcasm is heavy-handed, brother,” Dietrich told him. “A lighter touch is needed for the best effect. Men crave ceremonies. It is our nature.”

  “It was to change our nature that Jesus came among us. Di Flora’s Everlasting Gospel eliminates all need for signs and riddles. ‘When that which is perfect is come, forms and traditions and laws will have fulfilled their purpose and will be done away with.’ No, we must travel deep within ourselves.”

  Dietrich turned to the two Krenken. “All that over whether linen be white or green! By the holy saints, Joachim, such minutiae obsess you more than they do me.”

  “About such things, we know nothing,” Hans said. “But he has right over the inward-curling directions. To find our heavenly home, we must travel in directions not of height or length or breadth, and through a time not of duration.”

  “We could always walk,” said Gottfried, flapping his soft lips, but Hans clicked his horny lips and his companion cut his laughter short. “We have been cut off from home,” he said, “and from our companions. Let us not be cut off from each other.”

  * * *

  The next day, Dietrich came upon a man in close study of the church walls. Seizing him by the surcoat, he discovered it was the Jew servant. “What make you here?” he demanded. “Why were you sent?”

  But the Jew cried out, “No tell master I come. No tell, please!”

  The distress was so palpable that Dietrich judged it genuine. “Why?”

  “Because… Is unlawful for us to walk near house of… of tilfah.”

  “Truly? So, does it not defile you?”

  The servant cringed. “Honored one, I base-born rascal, not so pure and holy as master. What can defile me?”

  And was that irony that Dietrich heard in that voice? He nearly smiled. “Explain yourself.”

  “I hear of them, carvings, from hof servants and think I come see. We forbid to make images, but I am loving beauty.”

  “By His wounds, I believe you speak the truth.” Dietrich straightened and released his grip on the man’s sleeve. “How are you called?”

  The man doffed his cap. “Tarkhan Hazer ben Bek.”

  “A large name for such a small man.” Tarkhan wore a long, tasseled scapular beneath his rough coat, and his thick braids were unlike the delicate curls his master affected. “You are not Spanish.”

  “My people from east, from borderlands of Letts. Perhaps you know Kiev?”

  Dietrich shook his head. “Is it far, this Kiev of yours?”

  Tarkhan grinned sadly. “So far as edge of world. Once was mighty city of my people, when we hold Golden Empire. Now, who am I whose fathers once were kings?”

  Dietrich found himself amused. “I would invite you to my table, and learn of this Golden Empire; but I fear you would pollute yourself.”

  Tarkhan crossed his hands over his breast. “Mighty ones, like master, so pure even small things are polluting them. Now he think golden-eye demon watching him and he draw seal of Solomon around rooms. But me, what matter? Beside, good manners never pollute.”

  The mention of golden-eyed demons held Dietrich momentarily speechless. Had the Krenken gone to the lower woods to peek at this exotic stranger? “I… I think I may have some porridge, and a little ale. I cannot place your accent.”

  “Is because my accent has no place. In Kiev, are Jews and Rus, Poles and Letts, Turks and Tatars. Is wonder I understand myself!” He followed Dietrich into the parsonage.

  Joachim had just placed two bowls of porridge on the table. He stared, and Tarkhan favored him with a cautious smile. “You preacher I hear of.”

  “I am no friend to Jews,” Joachim replied.

  Tarkhan spread his hands in mock astonishment. Joachim said no more, but fetched a third bowl and some bread from the kitchen. These he placed on the table, just out of Tarkhan’s reach. “No wonder,” the Jew murmured to Dietrich as he gathered his food, “you sometimes burn them.”

  “Beware of too much cleverness,” Dietrich whispered in return.

  Each prayed grace after his own fashion. Tarkhan said over the clack of wooden spoons on wooden bowls, “Hof servants say you man of learning, much travel, and study nature.”

  “I was a scholar at Paris. Buridan was my master. But of this Kiev, I know nothing.”

  “Kiev, merchant city. Many come and go, and this wonders me when I boy. I taking service with ben Schlomo because he travel, so I seeing many place.” He spread his hands. “So, I know he forbids ‘Maimonism’? He say council of rabbis declaring forty years ago scientia not proper to Jews. Talmud only should be study. I should know this? I ask, where in Talmud this written, and he tell me only pure may study Talmud — which I am not. Oy!” He raised his eyes to heaven in silent entreaty — or rebuke.

  Joachim grunted. “Your master is right about the vanity of worldly knowledge, but wrong about which book should be studied.”

  The Jew took another spoon of porridge. “Everywhere I go, I hear this thing. In Muslim lands, too, but there, only Koran fit for study.”

  “The Muslims were wonderful scholars once,” Dietrich said. “And I have heard of your Maimonides — as great a scholar as our Thomas and the Saracen Averröes.”

  “Master is calling Maimonists worse heretics than Samaritans. ‘Destroy, burn and root them out,’ he say. Is popular idea, I am thinking, for all folk. Muslims, too.” Tarkhan shrugged. “Oy!

  Everyone else persecute Jews. Why not other Jews? Maimon himself was flee Cordoba because Ispanish rabbis persecute him. Until Master say this,” he added, “I never hear of him. So I was follow teacher I never hear?”

  Dietrich chuckled. “For a Jew, you are a man of wit.”

  Tarkhan’s grin vanished. “Yes. ‘For a Jew.’ But I find it so in all land. Some men wise, some fools; some wicked, some good. Some all of that, some times. I say Christian can be save in his religion, as Jew can in his, or Muslim in his.” He paused. “Master is never telling you this, but we escape Regensburg because guilds take arms and fight Jew-killers. There gave in that city, two-hundred and seven and thirty righteous gentiles.”

  “May God bless those men,” said Dietrich.

  “Omayn.”

  “Now,” Dietrich said, as he carried the bowls to the sideboard, “let us sit by the hearth, and hear of this Golden Empire.”

  The Jew planted himself upon a stool while Dietrich stirred the logs to encourage the flames. Outside, wind rushed and the afternoon windows darkened with the clouds.

  “This tale from old time,” Tarkhan said, “so how much true? But is good tale, so no matter. In old times, in north of Persia, live ‘Mountain Jews,’ Simeon tribe, put there by Asshurrim. But many laws forgot until King Joseph find Talmud again. They know Elijah and Amos, Micah and Nahum, but now come flatland Jews from Babylon tell of new prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekial. Then pagan Turks come over to One God. Together we create Golden Empire. Our merchants go I’Stamboul, Baghdad, even Cathay.”

&nbs
p; “Merchants,” said Joachim, who had affected not to listen. “You had much gold, then.”

  “Among Turks each direction is having color. South white, west gold, and Khazars then west-most of all Turks. Itli Khan name seven judges. Two judging our people by Talmud; two judging Christians; two judging Muslims by shari’a. Seventh judge pagans, who were worship sky. Many years our khan fight Arab, Bulgar, Greek, Rus. I see in old book, Jewish knight in chainmail riding steppe pony.”

  Dietrich stared in astonishment. “I have never heard of this empire!”

  Tarkhan struck his breast. “Like all grown proud, Lord bring us low. Rus take Kiev and Itli. All this happen long ago, and most are forgotting, save some, like me, who love for old tales. Land rule now by Mongols and Poles; and I, whose fathers once kings, must serve Ispanish moneylender.”

  “You don’t like Malachai,” Dietrich guessed.

  “His mother find that hard. Ispanish Jews proud, with strange customs. Eat rice cakes for Passover!”

  * * *

  When Dietrich later showed Tarkhan the door, he said, “It has grown dark. Can you find Niederhochwald?”

  The Jew shrugged. “Mule can find. I ride with him.”

  “I would…” Dietrich dipped his head, looked away for a moment at the stars. “I would thank you. Though I never wished your people any harm, never before have I seen a Jew as a man. Always it was ‘a Jew is a Jew!’”

  Tarkhan scowled. “True. But by us, Greek and Roman notzrim are same.”

  Dietrich recalled how the Krenken had seemed at first alike. “It is the strangeness,” he said. “Just as the trees of a distant forest blend into an indistinguishable whole, so do the singularities of strangers fade when their appearance or customs are distant from our own.”