The Origin of Sorrow (48 page)

“When you first came here, I thought maybe you and Yussel Kahn … “

Rebecca ran her fingers along the pieces of the quilt. “Yussel could have accepted it, perhaps. As he got used to the idea. But Yussel has Brendel — whom I adore.”

“I’ll never forget you two dancing at my wedding. The spirit, the joy.”

“Neither will I.”

“It’s too bad we Jews don’t have saints.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I would nominate you.”

“What a thing to say! Saint Rebecca, sweaty and stark naked under her shift. Maybe Hiram Liebmann could draw me. For the ages.”

“You heard about that? I wonder who it was who posed.”

“When you see the drawings, you’ll know.”

“I will? I heard there aren’t faces.”

“In the mikveh, who looks at faces?”

“The mikveh. I never thought of that. I wonder if the model thought of that.”

Guttle groaned, shifted the infant to her other breast. “It still hurts. Between my legs.”

“That will take time to heal. Where the tissue tore.”

“This little one really wanted to come out, I don’t know why. In the lane, life is not so pleasant she needed to hurry.” Guttle kissed the infant’s moist head. “Why don’t you go upstairs and wash, Rebecca? Take one of my clean shifts.”

The Doctor looked at the baby. Her face, with its strong cheek bones, hardened. She turned her eyes from Guttle. They lighted on the painting of the wedding.

“Go up and wash. Leah and I will be fine.”

Still the Doctor did not speak.

“What is it?”

Rebecca knelt beside the bed, gently took the infant from Guttle’s breast. She held it to her cheek, she pressed her hand to its chest. She stood and held the infant’s face near a small mirror on the wall. Trembling, Guttle sat up in the bed, grabbed her soaked hair with her fingers, pulled at it instead of screaming.

“I think she’s gone,” the Doctor said.

“Give her to me! She can’t be gone. She just needs her mother’s milk.”

Holding the infant in both hands, Rebecca handed her to Guttle, who pressed her to her breast. “Nooo,” she murmured, a long, low moan of pain. “Drink, Leah, drink!” The infant did not suckle. Guttle pressed the infant’s face hard into her breast. “Drink, Leah! Listen to your mother!”

Closing her eyes, Guttle lay back on the pillow, one hand cupped around the child. Gently the Doctor lifted the dead baby away. Guttle turned onto her side, her face toward the wall.

“Her little lungs couldn’t hold the air. It was to be expected.”

Guttle did not reply.

“I have to take her away. I’ll send Avra to be with you.”

Still barefoot, the Doctor left the room, holding the small body wrapped in a towel

They all came. Jennie Aron came, in a simple brown shift, her hair cut short, her bare arms pale from prison. Melka came, a woman again, in a velvet robe of maroon and gold, a simple gold crown on her head. Madame Antoine came, in a gown of pastel blue, her bodice cut low, combs of diamonds piled in her hair. Guttle’s tears quenched the flames that licked at Jennie’s knees. Melka breathed life into a baby girl, Guttle handed her carefully to the Queen. Marie Antoinette smiled, touched its chin, her fingers burdened with gold and diamond rings. Madame Leah, she cooed, and lifted the child, lovingly, high in the air.

Meyer entered the room. Still she faced the wall, but through the colors of her dream she sensed his presence.

He moved close to the bed, he gazed at her back as it rose and fell evenly. His heavy eyes scoured the shadowed folds of the quilt she had made while pregnant, from odd bits of cotton and wool; she’d made a smaller one for the child. He looked beside the bed for a cradle, looked in the corners of the room for a pulled-out drawer.

“She’s gone,” Guttle murmured, without turning.

He sat on the bed, the straw in the mattress sighing. He touched her hip through the quilt. She did not stir. He noticed the child’s quilt blending in near the edge of the bed. Pulling it closer, he pressed his fingers to its useless folds. He did not speak. He squeezed her hip, then stood and left the room, quietly closing the door.

Upstairs, in the kitchen, he hugged Avra and the children to him, together, his encompassing arms his only speech; they, too, knew to remain quiet; Avra had explained. This loss, his reason whispered, was common; more than half the babies ever born died quickly, not only in the lane but everywhere; the doctors had warned them all.

Reason offered little comfort. Meyer felt that Yahweh could do better.

Eyes closed, lids weighted with guilt, his mind groped in the dark at a pinpoint of light as from a distant star — the light of the most recent happiness he’d known. It had been so long ago. With intense effort, he recalled when it was. It had been in Hesse-Hanau, at noon.

They never spoke of the baby’s death. For weeks it was a wall between them; then a curtain; then a fragile mist, in which like tentative lovers they started holding hands. Peering into their souls, they saw a cradle, empty, pleading. Seeking surcease, they went to see Rabbi Simcha. “It’s been my experience,” he said, “that the soul, to flourish, needs both love and sorrow — much as a tree needs sun and water.”

“Love,” Guttle said. “Why sorrow?”

“Look about the lane,” Simcha said. “It appears to be a building block.”

Nor did they speak again of Wilhelm’s money — not till Guttle referred to it eleven months later, after a letter arrived from Ephraim Hess in America. The letter was longer than the others they’d received. Meyer read it silently at the kitchen table, after the children had gone to bed.

3 January 1777

Dear Meyer Rothschild and Frau R..

I feel sorry I have not written you in much time, but I have been busy fighting the war. My Eva has written to you, I know. Now I have time to write because I am in a hospital with a wound. Do not be frightened, it is not a serious wound. I shall return to my company before too long. Meanwhile, I thought you would be interested to hear the story of how this wound came about. It has to do with the Judengasse.

I have been fighting in a regiment under the command of General George Washington. It seems that the other George, King George of England, has hired many thousands of soldiers from Germany to come fight his war for pay. We call them Hessians — and guess why. Because most of them come from Hesse-Kassel and Hesse-Hanau, not very far from Frankfurt. I do not know if you know of this. It seems very strange to me.

Until not long ago my regiment had not encountered them. Then General Washington learned, from his spies or scouts, that a large army of these Hessians was making winter camp at a place called Trenton, across a river called the Delaware, where we were hidden. General Washington decided on a surprise attack. On Christmas night, my regiment and others, led by a Kernel named John Glover, ferried across the river. The night was dark, without a moon. The river was clogged with ice. Many times our boats hit floating chunks of ice in the black current. I nearly tumbled into the water once, but I did not.

When we reached the other shore we marched to Trenton and attacked the Hessian camp from three directions. They were caught by surprise, and many surrendered, but most fought. Moving along the grass among bushes and trees I think I may have wounded a few with my shots. Toward morning as the battle raged some distance away I crept around a large stand of bushes and came face to face with one of the enemy as he was crawling around from the other side. We both jumped up. Suddenly we were facing each other from four feet apart. Whoever shot first or lunged first with his bayonet could have killed the other. Instead we crouched there with our knees bent, looking into each other’s face. Who goes? he said in German. He was one of the Hessians, of course. I answered him in Judendeutch, which was close enough to German for him to understand. I am from Frankfurt, I said.

I did not mean for him to think I was also a Hessian fighter, of course — our uniforms are so different. We both wear blue coats but theirs are trimmed with red, and we have beige pants and they have white pants (you could guess I was once a rag dealer, no?) And their hats are taller, red with gold fronts, like cathedral doors. I asked where he was from. He was suspicious at first. All I was trying to do was be friendly, so we would not kill each other, with the sounds of the battle dying down, and him not British at all. We were still staring, our weapons aimed at each other. He said he was from Hesse-Hanau. I lived only a few kilometres from there, I told him, in the Judengasse. The fellow nodded. Our arms were getting tired, so we lowered our muskets so the stocks were resting on the ground.

I said to him — in Judendeutch, he did not speak English — there is no point killing each other, why don’t you go back to your regiment and I will go back to mine. He thought a moment and said that was a good plan. I even wanted to shake hands with him but he seemed to think it was some kind of trick. So I shrugged and turned to walk away, and heard a twig snap under him and I leaped to the side just as he lunged at my back with his bayonet, at the same time saying, in an ugly voice — Dirty Jew!

If I had not lunged to the side I most likely would have been dead. His bayonet could have pierced my lungs or heart from the back. As it was, his bayonet drove into the back of my shoulder. I pulled away and whirled and thrust my bayonet into his belly. I pulled it out and drove it hard into his his chest. Blood spurted everywhere, including on my uniform. I must have burst his heart. He fell to the ground on his back. In his eyes was an expression of surprise, as if he was asking me why I had killed him. As if he was asking me how could a Jew do that? Then his eyes rolled back in his head and he died.

I write in such detail mainly to point out what happened at the end. I sailed all the way to America six years ago, only to be almost killed by a German from Hesse-Hanau — not because I was an enemy soldier, but because I am a Jew!

The bayonet wound is in my left shoulder, so I am able to write this letter with my right hand. The shoulder is healing well, the Doctors say. In a few weeks I should be fighting again. I will address this envelope only to you, Meyer Rothschild, because I don’t know if women, like your Guttle, will be too upset reading about how I killed this man. I leave that up to you. (I never asked his name. I wish I had. Though I don’t know why.) In the battle, I found out later, we Americans had only ten casualties and the Hessians had a hundred. We also took a thousand prisoners. Of course, in other battles we have had to retreat. These I have not written about.

I hope this letter finds everyone well in the Judengasse.

I remain your former neighbor and fellow Jew,

—Cpl. Ephraim Hess

Finishing the letter, Meyer was incensed at the irony — as Ephraim no doubt meant him to be. He was grateful that the rag dealer was alive. Without hesitation, he handed the letter across the table to where Guttle was knitting. She glanced at him questioningly, then put down her needles and read it.

When she was done, she set the letter on the table, and resumed her work. The ivory needles clacked faintly as her deft fingers dipped and pulled. Using pale blue yarn, she was knitting a sweater for an infant.

“Another Hessian killed,” she murmured, as she spread the stitches on the needle. “Seventy-six more gulden to invest.”

Meyer reacted as if a bomb had exploded in the kitchen. The bomb took his breath, he could not speak. He stood and turned from her and glared at the whitewashed wall hung with black pans, as if they would tell him what to say. He was furious, yet he dared not upset her. Not when she was with child.

His chest was burning, he was trying to calm himself. He waited, his back to her, wanting her to apologize. All he heard was the sound of her needles clicking. “I’m sorry” was something Guttle rarely said.

He wanted his anger to pass. He willed it to pass. It hung about like an unwanted dog. It nipped at his heart.

He had chosen her to marry, he knew, because she had a mind. Because she thinks. He cannot control what she thinks. Now he suddenly understood: neither can she. What she thinks is who she is. Even when she is wrong.

He turned and approached the table where she knitted, and touched her shoulder. She looked up from her needles, a question in her eyes. He saw her read the answer in his gaze, the answer to her unspoken question: love triumphant over pain. She set down her knitting and stood, and accepted his arms around her, and let her head rest against his chest. For a long time they stood that way, bloodied survivors beneath the tree of life.

Book Five: The Killing

The resurrection of the dead is one of the cardinal principles established by Moses our Teacher. A person who does not believe in the principle has no real religion, certainly not Judaism. However, resurrection is only for the righteous.

—Maimonides