by Will Thomas
“Do you have an address at which you can be reached, should we need to speak to you again?”
“I have what your police call ‘no fixed abode,’ but ask around. I can always be found. Now, gentlemen, I would like to pray over you and your search.”
Reb Shlomo stood, raised his hands palms up, and began speaking a Hebrew prayer in a loud voice. People stared at us as they walked by not three feet from our table, and I was a little embarrassed. He finally finished his blessing and turned to Barker.
“Good hunting,” he said, then clapped a hand on my back. “Stay alive, Little Brother. And keep away from trapdoors.”
He stuffed the last roll between his fierce teeth and launched himself into the passing crowd. Barker picked up a menu and began to look it over, while I sat there puzzling. Trapdoors? What did he mean by trapdoors? I thought the fellow a little touched in the head.
“The rabbi seemed a bit primitive for a scholar like Pokrzywa, from what I’ve seen,” I remarked. “I would think a fellow like Da Silva would be more to his liking.”
“The Ashkenazim have always prized their little country rabbis. The more dirty and superstitious they are, the better they like them, even the sophisticated Jews from the cities. You will often find an educated Moskovite bending a knee to the latest near-illiterate holy man. Sometimes the more outrageously they act, the better they are liked. Not that I include Shlomo in that category. He seems rather wise. Shall we tuck in then, lad?”
After a satisfactory dinner of moussaka, Barker announced that we’d done enough for the day. Racket, who had been lurking about, picked us up for the long ride south. Once we were settled in our seats, Barker made a rare comment.
“The hansom cab,” he said, “presents you with drama, of a sort. The cab is like a proscenium arch, and the town of London the stage. It’s fascinating, if you know where to look. I can’t tell you how many pedestrians I’ve seen on the street who are wanted men, or how often I’ve witnessed a crime committed in broad daylight. I’ve seen dozens of watches and wallets stolen, and confidence men plying their trade. Several times I could have stepped from the cab and collared someone Scotland Yard would very much like to see.”
“Why didn’t you?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Often I was on an investigation of my own, and Scotland Yard isn’t exactly gracious when a private agent nabs a suspect for them. It makes it look like they’re not earning their shilling.”
Once home, Barker sent the cabman to his well-deserved rest with a handful of silver. We retired to our rooms, but I was restless. Barker had sent up a new stack of books. They were all Jewish titles: Zionism and the Jewish Question; The Chosen People; Anti-Semitism in Medieval Europe; and Yiddish Folklore. The latter, of course, interested me the most, but I was not in a reading mood. I was just about to chuck it across the bed and stare at the ceiling, when there was a knock at the door.
“Come in!”
My employer stuck his large head into the room. “Reading already, are you? Good lad. I won’t interrupt you, then.”
“No, no! Please do!”
“I was just wondering if you’d like to try a little shooting practice.”
I sat up. That’s what I needed, something to stir my blood. So far I’d felt like a counterfeit detective, driving about, watching Barker ask questions, reading out of books. Perhaps the scent of gunpowder in my nostrils would convince me of what I was to become.
“I’ve never shot a gun before,” I admitted. “Is there a firing range in the area?”
“I have one set up in the cellar. Come along.”
On the ground floor, in that long hall which ran a straight line from the front door to the back, there was a blank-looking door which led down a set of steep steps. The cellar was a single large room, with a section set off as a kind of lumber room. The walls and floor were lined with thick padding, which might have given the room a sinister appearance, if it weren’t for the Indian clubs, medicine ball, and other accoutrements of physical culture. On the far wall was a circular paper target. I looked about but didn’t see any pistols. Instead, Barker picked up an Ulster coat from the stair and held it out for me to put on.
“This was a little late in arriving, being specially made for me. The Krause brothers did the tailor work, while another friend of mine made the…modifications. Reach into the right pocket. What do you feel?”
“The butt of a pistol…and something else. Stiff leather?”
“Correct. The holster is built into the pocket. Look at the lining along the right, inside. What do you see?”
“A buttonhole. What’s a buttonhole doing here?”
“Your patience, a moment longer. Put your hands in both pockets and face the target. Good. Now spread your feet, shoulder width. Step forward with your right foot. Raise your right arm, still with your hand in your pocket, firmly grasping the pistol, and pull your left arm behind you, shifting the entire coat.”
I did as he said, moving the entire overcoat behind me as I stepped forward, and an amazing thing happened. The barrel of the pistol pushed out through the buttonhole.
“Fire!” he yelled in my ear, and I squeezed the trigger almost involuntarily. The shot went low, about a foot below the target. It was intensely loud in the small chamber.
“Really, Thomas,” he said in mock disapproval. “Shooting a fellow in the vitals. Not very sporting. It takes too long for him to die, and it’s a painful and ignoble death.”
“Sorry, sir. The coat is rather heavy.”
“It is. There is lead padding in the chest and back. I won’t guarantee that it will stop a bullet, but it may at least slow it down. There are four more shots in your revolver, which, by the way, is a Webley Irish constable issue, with the site filed down. Let us see if you can hit the target this time.”
I placed all four of them on the target, but only one within an inch of the bull’s-eye. I thought the coat ingenious but not, as Barker would say, “sporting.” A fellow might already be shot before he realized you had a gun.
“Better,” my employer said. “There are a half dozen ways to aim and shoot, but the best is still to point as if one were pointing a finger. Too much thinking slows one down. Here is a box of rounds. There’s cotton here for your ears’ sake. Open that window to the garden when you’re done or the whole house shall smell of powder. Keep practicing a few times a week, and you’ll be as good as I.”
“And how good is that?” I wondered aloud.
He stopped on the step and looked back over his shoulder. His hands moved up under his arms. He whirled, pulling two revolvers from out of nowhere. Bullets spat in unison not inches from my face. Emptied, the pistols were thrust back under his arms, where I heard them strike leather. Then his hands moved down to his pockets. His coat moved, the barrel appeared through the little eyelet in his coat, and a half dozen shots went off like firecrackers. Then he shifted the coat around and fired from the left side. The room reeked of gunpowder. Barker nodded good evening and left. If he said anything, I couldn’t hear it. I couldn’t hear anything.
Need I even mention that the bullets were clustered round the bull’s-eye like four-and-twenty blackbirds? As I looked at the neat ring of holes, I remembered that, in prison argot, “barker” was the word used for a pistol. I thought he rather deserved the name.
7
THE NEXT MORNING, MONDAY, I WAS AWAKENED to the sound of men working in the garden. Barker’s bass rumble could be heard, offset by the tenor chatter of Chinese workmen. I seemed fated to be surrounded by Orientals these days. I got up and dressed and was on the ground floor, nearly to the end of the hall, when I was stopped in my tracks. The heavenly aroma of fresh coffee was in the air, pungent and earthy, the last thing I expected in Barker’s house. My olfactory sense led me to a door on the left and through it. I found myself in the kitchen.
It wasn’t a remarkable room; everything was functional rather than decorative. All the tools of a well-stocked kitchen were there, as well as veget
ables in baskets, onions and garlic in strands, and herbs drying in bundles suspended from the ceiling. What was missing was the sturdy, middle-aged matron who reigned over kitchens the length and breadth of the land. In her place was a fleshy, bearish-looking man with a coffee cup in his hand and a sour look on his face, glaring out at the workers through a bay window in the back. He was unkempt, his nose was the hue and shape of a turnip, and he smoked a cigarette in imminent danger of burning his lips.
“Who in hell are you?” he snarled, in heavily accented English.
“I’m the new assistant,” I answered. “Who in hell are you?”
“I am the cook.” He was French, I decided. “ ’Allo, Assistant.”
“Hello, Cook. Is that coffee I smell?”
“That depends. Do you like coffee?”
“I’d decimate an entire native village for a good cup about now,” I said.
The man crossed to a silver pot by the stove and poured coffee into a stout mug. “Spoken like a man. Noir or au lait, monsieur?”
“Noir, s’il vous plaît,” I answered in my best schoolboy French.
“Come over by the window and sit,” he said, pointing to a small table with two chairs. “I am Etienne Dummolard.”
“Thomas Llewelyn,” I replied, grasping his offered hand, as broad as a flipper, and sitting down.
“So tell me, Monsieur Llewelyn (it came out ‘le Vellan’), how do you like my cooking so far?”
I hesitated to be honest but took the chance anyway. “It must be difficult to keep all these spices from accidentally falling into the food.”
The cook smiled and tossed the last of the cigarette onto the flagstone floor. “Very droll, monsieur. It is unfortunate that you have arrived in the middle of a disagreement between your employer and myself. I contend that he has no taste buds. I could cook one of his books for him and he would eat it without comment. I wished to discover just how bad my cooking could become before he would complain, for scientific purposes, you understand. Nothing so far. My Scottish feast was a work of art, wouldn’t you say? Not so much as a grain of salt in the entire meal. A Frenchman would have shot me dead on the spot.”
“You can cook, then?”
“I am a chef, trained in Paris, monsieur. I own the best French restaurant in Soho, La Toison d’Or. Would you care for an omelet?” He went to the stove, lit another cigarette on the hob, and took down a saucepan.
“Yes, please! So, why work for a man with no ability to appreciate your cooking?” I asked.
“Mon capitaine and I, we have a long history together. I could not desert him now. It was he who financed my restaurant. I work here in the mornings, and in my own kitchens during the afternoons and evenings. I leave the evening meals for Monsieur Mac to…what is? Heat up? Heat over?”
“Why do you call him capitaine?” I asked, watching my employer in his shirtsleeves working in the garden.
“Because that is what he was, a ship’s captain aboard the Osprey, a steamer trading along the South China Sea. I was his galley cook. He was a good captain, though not above cracking the occasional skull or two.”
I leaned forward, conspiratorially, and asked, “What happened to his eyes?”
The Frenchman put a knowing finger aside his purple-veined nose. “Not my secret to tell, mon ami. Here is your omelet.”
He set down a plate containing a perfect semicircle of eggs. Cheese and mushrooms spilled from the center. It was golden, fragrant, and beautiful. I took a bite.
“My word, that’s incredible,” I said.
“I hope you don’t mind a little cigarette ash in your eggs. You didn’t complain about it in the stew yesterday. More coffee? You don’t know how refreshing it is to see someone in this house who enjoys my cooking. Mac won’t touch anything that isn’t blessed by his rabbi, and the last fellow was a damnable Chinaman who picked at my food as if I’d put a rat in it. I almost did, just to spite him.”
“I hear the fellow died,” I said, pressing for information.
“Oui, but not from my cooking. As your police say here, he caught the ‘lead flu.’ It’s good to have you here, Monsieur Llewelyn. I believe I shall declare the contest at an end and return this house to proper cuisine, but only for your sake, not for mon capitaine. Unless you think I should try some haggis. I’ve never stuffed a sheep’s stomach before.”
“No haggis, please. I suppose I had better go out and see if Mr. Barker needs me. Thank you for the wonderful coffee and the omelet. Au revoir.”
“Really, monsieur, whoever taught you French has a grudge against my country.”
I was shaking my head at Barker’s choices in help as I stepped out of doors. Chinese gardeners. Jewish butlers. Lazy clerks. Temperamental French cooks, and last but not least, downtrodden Welsh assistants. I stepped out into a regular flurry of Chinamen. Barker was easy to spot, being the only one of us over five and a half feet in height. Harm sunk his teeth into my boot in jovial greeting, and I dragged him across the white pebbles to his owner.
“Morning, sir! What are our plans for today?”
Barker put down his rake and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. “We are attending Mr. Pokrzywa’s funeral in about an hour.”
“His funeral? So soon?”
“Not soon. In fact, it is late. The Jews do not embalm their dead, you see, and the body must be in the ground within twenty-four hours, if possible. They believe the body should be treated reverently and allowed to decay according to nature’s timetable.”
“I’ve never been to a Jewish funeral. Are Gentiles allowed?”
“We are, provided we observe their rituals. I’ll explain everything as we go along, but you must pay close attention. Though they may be intent on the ceremony, there will be many eyes upon us. You must act with respect and sincerity. If you do, it shall cement our relationship with the community. If you fail, we might as well send a note to Sir Moses declining the case.”
“I’ll not fail, sir,” I promised.
“Good lad. It is a beautiful service, with deep meaning behind every action, different in some ways from our own funerals. In fact, you’ll hardly believe that such a service goes on in London every day.”
“You say different, sir. In what ways is it different?” I asked, hoping to prepare myself.
“What?” Barker asked. “You want me to give away the surprise and miss the chance to watch you squirm? Not hardly. You’ll get on. Or you won’t.”
While the workmen showed signs of leaving for the day, we went inside. Barker went upstairs to change, while I chose a more somber waistcoat and tie. When we stepped outside, Racket and his cab were just pulling up to the curb. The warm sun lit up Racket’s red beard, which fairly glowed against his dark clothes. We clambered up into the vehicle and made our way east, skirting the Thames.
I had passed the old Jewish cemetery a time or two in the past, on the way to an interview, but I had never stopped to peer inside. Aside from the Hebrew lettering on the gravestones, the main difference between this and any Christian cemetery was the lack of memorials and mausoleums. There was little to distinguish one family from another, just rows of similar-looking markers.
Beside the cemetery there was a prayer hall, not much different from a chapel. The entire ceremony would be graveside, and not, as I had supposed, in a synagogue. At the door, a man corresponding to an usher presented us each with four items: a skullcap, a hair clip, a black ribbon, and a small pin. As if he did such things every day (and who can tell about Barker, perhaps he did), my employer turned me about and attached the skullcap to the back of my head with the hair clip. Then he pinned the ribbon to my lapel. It was strange to see him in a skullcap, but he wore it with dignity.
Inside, we sat close to the back, but the room was small enough that I had a good view of the coffin. It was an unadorned pine box of simple workmanship, and I knew the body inside it was swathed in a shroud, just as the one to whom he bore an uncanny resemblance had been swathed nineteen hundred years be
fore.
“That’s a very plain coffin,” I remarked to Barker sotto voce. “I thought he’d been paying money every month to his chevra-whatever.”
“They believe in simple burials. I assure you that Sir Moses, and even Lord Rothschild for all his millions, will have a similar burial.”
“There are no flowers,” I whispered.
“No,” Barker answered. “They are not part of a Jewish funeral. There will also be no music. Now listen, lad, when I give you the nudge, I want you to seize the ribbon on your lapel, and rip it.”
“You want me to what?”
Just then a rabbi got up to speak. It might have helped me had he spoken in English, but the entire ceremony was in Hebrew. To me, whenever someone speaks in another language, it always seems to drone on and on. The rabbi pontificated through his long, curling beard, and after a quarter hour or so, I was beginning to stifle a yawn. Just then Barker cracked me in the ribs, his little “nudge.” I gave a loud cough and ripped my ribbon. Simultaneously, the entire assembly tore their own ribbons, and even their clothing, and gave a brief cry of grief. This, as it turned out, was the kriah, the first formal act of mourning.
“Rather large crowd,” I whispered to my employer. “I thought he had no family.”
“The fact that he had no family is why the crowd is so large,” Barker explained patiently. “It means that the entire community becomes his family. Also, the Jews have great respect for the teachers of their children.”
The rabbi motioned to the pallbearers, who shouldered their brother’s remains. We followed them out to the gravesite. The coffin was let down into the ground with due gravity, and the rabbi spoke a brief eulogy. A Methodist minister would have been just warming up, only beginning to hint coyly about the perils of going to the grave and eternal damnation without the sin-cleansing blood of Jesus Christ.
At this point, the rabbi seized a shovel and, turning it around, used the back of it to push dirt onto the coffin. The sound of the clods of earth rattling atop the lid made some mourners flinch. He passed the shovel to the next person, who followed his example, then passed it on to the next, and so on. The mourners were filling up the grave themselves. Eventually, the shovel reached us. Barker used the backwards shovel to throw in some earth, and so did I. I liked it, the doing of it, I mean. It made me feel a part of it all, that I had done something.
