The Library Paradox (25 page)

‘You are Rebecca Gad, aren’t you?’ I said. ‘I have just realised it – I should have known it before. You are Menachem Gad’s daughter. Now I understand why you and Amy are so frightened about Jonathan. You think he killed the professor
because he had a good reason to do it.
Is that what it is?’

‘No!’ she cried loudly, and sank half-fainting into her husband’s arms. ‘No, it isn’t that! Innocent, guilty, it doesn’t make any difference. It’s too late, too late. Arrested – put on trial – condemned!’ And she uttered a choked cry and closed her eyes, pressing her hands to them as though to shut out the vision. And I understood what it was that she feared. It was that which she had already lived through once.

‘What does this mean? Who is Menachem Gad? What are you talking about? What about your father?’ said David urgently, staring back and forth between the two of us. ‘Rivka, what is this all about?’

There was a silence while Rivka struggled with herself.

‘It would be better for you to tell your husband,’ I advised her softly. ‘If your father was innocent, then there is no dishonour in his death.’

‘Do you think so?’ she said. ‘Then you are the only person I have ever heard say so. Dishonour – I don’t know, but there is pain. Too much pain,’ she continued, her face still buried in her hands. ‘Pain and terrible memories. I can’t bear to talk about it, after so many years of silence.’

Pulling her hands away, he captured them in his, bending
towards her with an expression on his face that reminded me of a half-forgotten moment in my own experience.

I lay on my bed, the midwife near me; the birth pangs had been upon me for many hours already, and I was exhausted. Each one was followed by a little oasis of calm, but these oases were becoming shorter, and I did not know how I should find the courage and the strength to continue enduring the ever-increasing pain. I saw the door of my bedroom open suddenly, and Arthur, entering and crossing the room with a firm step in spite of the midwife’s annoyed exclamations of ‘Mr Weatherburn, sir! You must not come in here now!’ came up to me. Taking my hand in his, he bent close to me and said … some of those words which the normal course of daily life gives so few occasions to hear. They filled me with joy, they heartened and encouraged me, and I turned to him with a smile to tell him so, when I was suddenly submerged in a wave of pain stronger than ever. His face changed as he saw, and he looked at me with exactly the expression I saw on David’s features now, as he held his wife’s hands in his and looked into her eyes.

‘Tell me,’ he said softly.

‘My father was hanged, he was hanged for murder, for the horrible murder of a child,’ she cried, suddenly breaking down, ‘but he was innocent, David, he was innocent, I swear it. My father would never have killed a soul! He was a victim, no less than the little boy he was accused of murdering. They said – at the trial, David, they said – they said that he had done it for me, so that I should eat the matzah with … with the blood in it!’

She stopped, overcome. David stared at her.

‘It was because of things such as these that we left the old country,’ he said.

‘They can happen everywhere, David,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t have believed it before, but I know it now.’

We jumped, all three of us, at the sound of a sharp knock on the door. Nobody moved, and after a moment it was pushed open from outside. Amy entered, and stopped short at the sight of us.

‘Oh, I came to tell you myself,’ she began.

‘Vanessa told us,’ said Rivka. ‘Amy, she knows all about my father.’

Amy stared at me, dismay filling her features.

‘How did you find out?’ she stammered.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I countered.

‘Why should we tell you?’ she said, almost angrily. ‘So that you could become the first to believe that Jonathan murdered that monster? That’s what you think now, isn’t it? Anyone would.’

‘Do you?’ I said quickly.

Her eyelids lowered suddenly. ‘Of course not!’ she said.

‘Yet you are frightened, very frightened.’

‘Vanessa – do you have no imagination? Can’t you understand that my family has already been through this? It will destroy my mother, it will destroy us all. It’s obvious that the case against Jonathan is serious, horribly serious. They say he had the opportunity, and now they will say that he had a motive, too. We realised right away, he and I, that anyone could say he must have been lying. But as long as
no one knew that he had any connection with that horrible professor, we thought he would be safe from suspicion. We’ve just been waiting and worrying … and hoping that
you
would find the true murderer before anyone found out about this.’

‘You’ve known all this the whole time and never said a word,’ I marvelled, not knowing whether to be angry with her or with myself. ‘And when I asked you if you knew anything about James Wilson – you said nothing!’

‘You gave us the shock of our lives!’ she exclaimed. ‘We thought no one would ever find out, and you discovered the connection in less than one day! You really frightened us. We had been so keen on your coming, because we hoped you would find the true murderer before anyone noticed that Jonathan could be accused if his statement were considered untrue. Instead of that, you started to find out just what we didn’t want you to know. It was horrible! You mustn’t be angry with us, Vanessa. We were silly to think we could fool you, but you must understand why we tried.’

‘You did fool me,’ I said, but her words comforted me a little. They had tried, and succeeded for a certain time, but in the end, I had discovered the truth by myself. Yet something troubled me in her words. What did she mean, when she spoke of Jonathan’s ‘connection with that horrible professor’? What could that connection be – unless they were aware of Professor Ralston’s role in the trial of her uncles? If Jonathan knew that, then he had a motive indeed.

‘Amy,’ I said, ‘even if the police learn that Jonathan
is related to the Gad brothers, what motive would they attribute to him for the murder of Professor Ralston?’

She hesitated, looking at me, then glancing down again. ‘The anti-Semitism …’ she began.

‘No, Amy,’ Rivka intervened suddenly. ‘No, tell her. It’s no use hiding it any more. If anyone can help us, she will. I’ll tell you myself,’ she added, turning to me. ‘Our Uncle Baruch went to prison ten years ago, and Jonathan is the only person in the family to have visited him during all that time. Since Jonathan turned sixteen, he has been to Dartmoor Prison every three months. He was always especially close to Uncle Baruch as a child, and Aunt Judith and Uncle Simon decided to allow him to go when he would be old enough. They never wanted Amy to go, though, because of her being a girl. As for me, my mother and I had moved away from London. After my father – died—’ she winced at these words, ‘my mother and I went to live in Brighton, far from everything we knew. She took her own name of Rubinstein back and found employment in a hotel, but her health became worse and worse until she could barely do her work. She used to take me to the synagogue often; she became more and more devout with the years. She died when I was seventeen, and I didn’t know what to do, so I wrote to Aunt Judith. After all, she was my father’s sister and my only near relation. And I went to live with her and Uncle Simon. They were wonderfully kind to me. Because I had become more religious than they were, they allowed me to attend a different synagogue than theirs, and that’s how I met David, almost right away.’

‘You were married under the name of Rebecca Rubinstein?’ I asked.

‘Rivka Rubinstein,’ she replied. ‘My mother changed my name with hers when we moved to Brighton. But that is not what I meant to tell you. I wanted to say that I was just a child when it all happened, and even though I thought of Uncle Baruch sometimes, I never dared mention him to my mother, and she never spoke of him. So I knew nothing until I arrived at Aunt Judith’s, and then I learnt from Amy and Jonathan that Jonathan had been visiting him for years, and – this is the important thing – that Uncle Baruch had made him swear to try to find out who the anonymous witness at the trial was; the one whose false testimony caused the jury to bring in a verdict of guilty. And Jonathan had promised.’

‘He made him swear it at Jonathan’s very first visit to the prison,’ said Amy. ‘Jonathan was just sixteen, and I was twenty-one. He told me about it as soon as he came home. We got all fired up and felt noble. He wanted to search for the mysterious witness right away, and I wanted to help him. But we had no idea how to go about it. We didn’t find out anything for ages. We did try; we tried to see the judge, but he had died, and we tried to find out who had been on the jury, but no one could tell us. I didn’t see what else we could do; I was ready to give up. Jonathan didn’t want to give up, but he didn’t know what to do either. He ended up deciding to start frequenting anti-Semitic circles, in the hopes of hearing something. He took to reading their newspapers, and going to their lectures and meetings. He would come home furious, lock himself in his room for
hours; I’ve seen him cry, Vanessa. You have no idea what it’s like to be one of us! Each and every one of us has a battle to fight, no matter what circle of society we live in. It’s easy to see what can happen to people like my uncles – foreigners, penniless immigrants, only good enough for the rope. My mother thought she was escaping all that when she managed to marry into a wealthy, established bourgeois family. But our class has its own problems. We’re educated, and although Jews finally obtained the right to take degrees at Oxford and Cambridge – not thirty years ago, mind – we’re still shunned there in a hundred ways you couldn’t possibly understand. We learn to love refinement and nobility, yet we see ourselves reflected in the eyes of gentry like vermin. We want to welcome our persecuted co-religionists from Eastern countries, but it is no easy task, when their miserable masses cause the people among whom we live to turn against all Jews with a hatred that overflows even onto those who belong to the same set as themselves. When you’ve been given as many cold shoulders, and seen as many turned-away faces, when you’ve heard as many sniggers and snide remarks as we have, you start wondering and doubting – about yourself and yours. No one knows those feelings as we do. If you want to understand our story, you have to understand this. Have you ever heard of Amy Levy?’

‘I have,’ I said, surprised at the sudden change of topic. ‘I remember reading an exquisite story by her in
Woman’s World.
Why do you mention her?’

‘Because she is the writer who has best expressed what
I’m trying to tell you. Have you read her novel
Reuben Sachs
? No relation – except for the race.’

‘No,’ I admitted. ‘I didn’t realise she was a Jewish writer.’

She laughed bitterly. ‘She isn’t any more,’ she said. ‘She committed suicide, and no wonder. And that’s why I want to become a writer. I only wish I could express, in my writing, something of what she did. Read what she wrote, Vanessa. I have her book at home; I’ll give it to you. You have to know what it’s like. I’m telling you this because you have to understand why, when Jonathan came to King’s three years ago and heard about Professor Ralston, the famous anti-Semite history professor, he started going to his lectures. And he came to believe that Professor Ralston was the anonymous witness.’

‘How did he find out?’ I asked, reluctant to know, reluctant to hear the answer.

‘I don’t know exactly,’ she replied. ‘He went to several lectures; he became familiar with the professor’s library, and figured it out somehow. He told me over a year ago. He said that he didn’t have any proof, but felt certain.’

‘Amy – he hadn’t promised your uncle to take revenge, had he?’

‘I don’t think so,’ she said desperately. ‘I can’t believe it. I can’t believe my uncle would ask him to do that! And if he had – if he had, I’m sure Jonathan would have told me.’ But her voice shook with doubt.

‘Do you know why I was looking for Rebecca Gad and her mother?’ I asked. ‘Because I thought that one of them might have killed the professor. And do you know why?
Not because of their grievance against him. That would hardly explain why the murder should happen now, ten years later. Of course, the identity of the witness might have only just been discovered, but it seems too much of a coincidence that this would happen just when Baruch Gad was about to be freed. It occurred to me that someone who loved him, knowing he would be out of prison in another month, may have wished to prevent him from taking justice into his own hands, avenging his brother and, as a consequence, returning for the rest of his life to the prison cell from which he had only just emerged. That is why I was looking for Britta and Rebecca.’

‘I didn’t do that!’ cried Rivka, starting out of her chair. David, who was listening silently, took her hand reassuringly.

‘No – she’s asking if that is what Jonathan did,’ said Amy.

‘I am asking you if you know the answer,’ I said. ‘Who killed Professor Ralston?’

‘How can I know? It couldn’t have been Jonathan, and it wasn’t me – I don’t know. I don’t know!’ Rivka said desperately.

‘I don’t know either,’ whispered Amy. ‘Vanessa – I have asked myself about Jonathan, honestly, I have. Yet – he’s my brother! I’m five years older than he is, I’ve known him since he was a baby. He can’t have done it. It’s impossible.’

‘Have you really asked yourself about him?’ I said. ‘Have you asked yourself exactly what he was doing, why he was going to the professor’s library on that day? I saw
him this morning, and I asked him, but he refused to say.’

‘I have thought about it. I have wondered. But I think it must have been a coincidence,’ she said after a moment’s hesitation. ‘I told you that he went there sometimes, because he tried to frequent anti-Semitic circles, in order to seek … for …’

‘To seek for the identity of the witness,’ I completed. ‘But you told me he knew it already over a year ago. Why go to the library now?’

The two girls faced me silently.

‘Did Jonathan tell his uncle that he had discovered the witness?’ I asked.

‘Yes, he did, right away. My uncle thought of nothing else. He lived for that; he pressed him at each visit,’ said Amy. ‘Jonathan told him as soon as he was sure.’