The Origin of Sorrow (55 page)

Following the men, Pinchas Cohen paused in front of the house of the Chief Rabbi, and thought of Avram lying ill in bed, and began to play for his friend a gentle concert of mournful melodies.

Of all the men, only Yussel Kahn held back. He watched Brendel hang the “Closed” sign and lock the door of the Café, and close the dark blue curtains. Together they moved the tables back into place. Then Yussel took her hand. “Tired?”

“Very.”

“It’s been a memorable day. To begin so badly, and to end so well.”

“It’s only the end that counts.”

“I was afraid I might be in prison by now. That I might never see you again.”

“I know.”

He sat on the nearest chair, guided her onto his lap. He nuzzled the sweet, grassy smell of her faintly perfumed sweat. “I think it’s time,” he said. “Simcha shamed me into the spirit. Gluck scared me half to death. I told you once that I would know if the time came. I think it’s time.”

Brendel touched his face with her slim fingers. “Are you sure? Just because of Simcha and Rebecca, we don’t … ”

“Not because of them. For us. If you want to think about it . . .”

“I’ve had fifteen years to think about it.” She tugged on the point of his short reddish beard, lately lightened by a hint of gray. “What about your vow not to marry again?”

“Yahweh will understand.”

She hesitated. “And Lainie?”

“Lainie, too, will understand.”

Straightening the collar of her dress, he added, “You do have one thing to consider. It might destroy your reputation.”

Brendel grinned. “The Judengasse will survive.” She lightly kissed his nose. “But wait a moment. You don’t expect me to stop being me, just because of a wedding band.”

“Not for a minute.”

“Good. Because that would be bad for business.”

His hands encircled her waist, a moment’s kiss away. She whispered, “What about evening services?” His hands were untying her apron. “That, too, Yahweh will understand.”

Fifteen minutes earlier, hearing applause and shouting from below, Gilda Eleazar had made sure her sheitl was on straight and had looked out the third floor window. Rabbi Simcha, the new Chief Rabbi, was being hailed by his admirers as he walked up the lane. For a moment she began to shake with anger; her husband was not yet dead, and already they were cheering his successor. She told herself to be fair, knowing it was Avram who had made the changeover immediate, but still, they could have some consideration as they walked by the house where he was asleep. She thought of shushing them, but knew she would not be heard, and was afraid it could be taken wrong, taken as if she resented Rabbi Simcha. She did not. Only Yahweh she resented, for taking her husband before her.

She left the window and looked in on him; he was sleeping peacefully; between his gray beard and his gray mustache was the suggestion of a smile. As she sat heavily in a chair in the parlor, she said aloud, to the walls, “Me, I’m not smiling. Where will I live, Avram, the house is for Simcha now? To whom will I kvetch when my ankles hurt.?”

“Now music!” she had muttered as the sound of a violin blew in through the window. She tried to minimize her anger. “Let them play, let them cheer, they have little enough to cheer about.”

Her trembling hands were wrinkled, covered with ugly brown spots. “Adonai,” she said, gazing at the ceiling, “if we get married forever, why not take us together? Wouldn’t that be an improvement? Why should I sit helpless and see my Avram go? They’ll expect me to watch him buried into the earth. Watch them shovel dirt on top of him. More than fifty years we’ve lived together. How can I watch that?”

The fiddle notes continued to intrude. Wearily, she pulled herself up from her chair and went to the window to lower the glass, to close the shutters, to block out the sound. But at the window, she stopped. The music had changed. It had become a slow, mournful melody. Below in the lane she saw Pinchas Cohen gently working his bow, playing his oldest friend into heaven.

A light rain began to fall. Pinchas Cohen ignored it, continued to play.

Gilda felt a chill. She was in no hurry to shuffle to the bedroom. She knew.

43

Helmut Mann leaned against the base of a great black oak on the bank of the river Fulda, holding a fishing pole, its line drifting lazily in the current. Dragonflies buzzed along the silver surface, dipped and spun away. Beyond the muddy banks on both sides, spikey wild grasses, mostly cord grass and blue stem, sun bleached pale green in September, climbed the face of the hills. High above, to the fisherman’s left, its shadow hanging over the river just as the oak’s black branches did — just as Helmut’s fake Christian name hung over his Jewish self — was Riesenburg, the tall stone Castle of Thieves.

It had been nearly fifteen years since Hersch Liebmann, tired of being known to other highwaymen as the Judengasse Jew, had taken a different name. No longer did anyone even call him Helmut the Jew, as a few had done at first; the last cutthroat who had done so still carried a scar on his neck. Hersch did not mind his religion being known — a fair number of the highwaymen were Jews, including practicing ones who would not commit robbery on Saturdays. But when he left the cover of the hills and entered a town to have a woman, Helmut Mann suited him better on the hostel register.

The fish weren’t biting. Hersch, feeling lazy, didn’t care. He’d eaten a large breakfast of eggs stolen from a nearby chicken coop, and for dinner he could always approach the cooking fire of one band of thieves or another. His shoulders, arms and chest had grown thick enough, the blade in his boot was sharp enough, his willingness to use it notorious enough, that he was welcome to share a meal wherever he chose. He had learned quickly that for a Jew to survive in the wild he needed to be twice as mean as a Christian. In the early years several men had tested his Jewish mettle. No one had done so twice. Reputation was everything among thieves, just as it was in the ghetto; that was why he had not returned home when his fourteen years of exile had ended a year ago. In the lane he still would be looked down upon as a thief; here he was honored for it. In the ghetto he still would be suspected of murder, no matter that a jury had cleared him; here the rumor enhanced his safety.

He would have liked to visit his mother, but Yetta would be eighty-eight years old; most likely she was long dead. He had heard tales of a popular deaf mute artist called Lieb; he could not picture his brother as a painter, but he had not been eager to go and see. There would be questions of what he, Hersch, had been doing all these years. He was forty years old; he was not about to defend his life to bearded old men.

Pulling his fishing line from the river, he wrapped it around the pole. The fish would bite better at dawn, he knew, but he did not care to rise at dawn; in the real world there were no morning services. Although, out of habit, he still kept his head covered at all times — not with a yarmulke, but with a red cloth cap that was serviceable against sun and rain. He’d bought the cap from a shopkeeper in Göttingen, who told him they were popular among the working men of France.

In a linden across the river, a pale green woodpecker, with a cap as red as his, was tapping noisily. Hersch adjusted his own cap to fit more snugly, and as he climbed a worn path through the brush toward the castle, he reflected with contentment on his life as Helmut Mann: he rode on horseback far and wide under the German sky, stealing a new mount whenever his horse stepped into a rut or a gopher hole and went lame; he slept under the stars, or in a cliffside cave, or in an abandoned castle of his choosing; when he was short of coins he stopped a coach, or a solitary rider, and often did not have to rob again for weeks; he had not dug a grave in fifteen years — not since the snowy day he’d dug his father’s.

“That you?” A thin, womanly voice rose from within the bushes.

Leni. A whore who’d taken a liking to him a month back, and had stolen a mare from in front of a bridle shop and followed him into the hills. Not a real beauty, not enough meat on her bones, hair mousy brown instead of the blondes he preferred, but for now she suited him. Saved his weekly trip into some snide town. In return he made sure she was fed.

“Any news?” he said into the brush.

Leni emerged from the bushes, finished with her business, adjusting her faded dress, once-dark gray, dotted with yellow buttercups. “Fellow come in from Kassel a while ago. Says the Landgrave ain’t dead yet.”

“It’s just a matter of time.”

“What’s it to you if the Landgrave dies?”

“I told you already.” Leni wasn’t as smart as the girls in the lane, though she had other attributes. “When the old man dies, the nobles and the traders will be rushing in like grasshoppers for his funeral. And for the crowning of his fat son Wilhelm. Licking royal ass. Then they’ll have to ride home again. Easy pickings, coming and going.”

“What if you get caught? What will happen to me?”

You’ll go back to whoring, he thought, which you will do any day now, regardless. But he didn’t say it. “Never been caught yet. Why start now?”

He turned her around and gently pushed her up the narrow dirt path, following an arm’s length behind. Leafless branches grabbed their clothing like needy beggars, and had to be dislodged from shirt and skirt.

“Fellow rode up a while ago, looking for you,” she said. “Had a big black horse, a fancy sword on his saddle.”

“Who was it? Turn around and look at me when you talk.”

But he already knew who it was.

She turned to him, squinting into the late afternoon sun. “Said his name was Klaus. Said he’s your partner. I thought I’m your partner.”

“It’s different.”

More reliable than sunrise, Hersch thought. Klaus Fettmilch never is late when the pickings are easy. Word must have flown like a crow from here to Hanau, from Göttingen to Wiesenbad, from the highest hills to the river valleys. Prince Friedrich, the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, had a stroke. His Excellency is expected to die.

Leni giggled, dirty fingers covering her mouth.

“What’s so funny?”

“It’s different, you said. I sure do hope it’s different.”

“Your mind is filth.” He took her by the shoulders, turned her around, shoved her again towards the castle. Gently. She stumbled nonetheless before righting herself by grabbing hold of a bush from which the buds of purple berries grew.

“What’s so special with you and this Klaus?” she asked, looking over her shoulder.

“We’ve got history.”

The air suddenly chilled as they entered the shadow of the castle tower. They scrambled down a wall of rust-colored earth into a dry moat. Chunks of castle stone littered the bottom; the moat had not been filled with water in three hundred years.

Leni brushed soil from her dress. “What kinda history?”

“Let’s go find him.”

But they did not find him.

Riesenburg meant Giant Castle to the literal, who saw its tower soaring impossibly high into the sky since the twelfth century, and Castle of Giants to the superstitious serfs in the valley, who were convinced that mere humans could not have raised a stone fortress so high. Lord Adolph Rumpf, who built the castle and owned the serfs, assuring them that not only could they gather within the castle walls in the event of a barbarian attack, but that the unseen giants would help to defend the castle. For three centuries the enclosed stone structure was home to Lord Rumpf and his descendants, to servants, administrators of the fields and taxes, horses, soldiers, chickens, pigs and other livestock, for each of the four outer walls was nearly a thousand metres long. Neither the barbarians nor anyone else ever attacked, and in the year 1462, even as the Jews of Frankfurt were being walled into the Judengasse, the Rumpf descendants ceded their property to the Landgrave and his new state of Hesse and moved to a warmer and sunnier chateau they built on the Rhine.

The castle stood untouched for two hundred years. Then the former serfs — now called peasants — having not seen a giant in the vicinity for generations, began to vandalize the walls and turrets and doors for wood and stone with which to build sturdier huts of their own. The drawbridge over the dry moat was torn away, as were the great doors and much of the surrounding walls. Only in recent years had the remains of the castle been put to use again, as a gathering place for highwaymen. Here the thieves in the region slept easily between robberies. No police forces existed in the open lands, and should Constables from Hesse-Kassel, twenty kilometres to the north, or Hesse-Hanau, a hundred and fifty kilometres, to the south, or even the Landgrave’s personal troops, try to march against them, the highwaymen could easily hold out in the two hundred fortified rooms still standing, until the officers of the law became tired, or hungry, and went home.

Decaying castles scattered all along the river Fulda had fallen into similar disrepair and disrepute, and Hersch Liebmann, alias Helmut Mann, from time to time had taken his ease in many of their cold and mournful, windowless stone-floored rooms. At the moment, Riesenburg suited Hersch’s purposes best. It was the nearest castle to Hesse-Kassel, and only two kilometres from the north-south road leading in and out of that city.

The castle remains were so vast, with their rooms and half rooms, their walls and half walls, their shadows and half shadows, that Hersch Liebmann and Klaus Fettmilch did not find one another that night. Made generous by a full purse, Hersch tossed a coin to a couple of thieves roasting a rabbit over a fire in the dry moat, and he and Leni were invited to partake. Afterward, the two of them bedded down on saddle blankets in the castle keep, in a large room that once had been the chambers of a lord.

Rebecca and Simcha were lying together in a new feather bed they had purchased. She was looking at the ceiling, its wooden planks, a dark knot in one board shaped like the head of a horse. Her chest filled with remembered uncertainty, and she shuddered. The night was mild, only a thin sheet covered them. The lamps were off, a ghostly light from the moon, creeping in through the window, gave the many folds of the sheet a blue-white dimension.

“Are you tired, Simcha? Can I talk?”

His eyes were closed, but he seemed alert. “You can talk any time.”

She found his hand, took it in hers. For comfort, or to better monitor his reaction — she was not sure.

“That day in the cemetery, when you asked me to marry you, you said something we both let pass. You said anyone who comes to live in the Judengasse voluntarily must be running away from something.”

“Or hiding. Yes.”

“You were speaking of yourself?”

“I was including myself.”

“It’s true of me as well.”

“I know. I don’t know what, or who, but I’ve always believed there was something.”

Opening his eyes, he turned on his side to look at her, the new Rebecca, her black hair cropped short to fit under the caps and hats she had decided to wear in public instead of a sheitl — white caps while she was at work, large straw hats to complement her dresses on the Sabbath. They both felt the requirement in the Talmud for women to hide their hair was pointless, but they had agreed that as the wife of the Chief Rabbi she must follow the ancient tradition; if she wanted to break with the past, she should save her rebellions for more important matters.

“For you to stay here this long,” he said, “to deny all men your beauty for fifteen years — it could not have been just your work.”

“I’ve never told anyone what happened. I want to tell you, but I’m also hesitant. I want to keep your respect.”

The room darkened from blue-white to gray as a cloud covered the moon. From the forbidden park beyond the wall they heard a dog’s lonely howl.

“Somebody famous — whom I can’t recall, that’s how famous he was — wrote that ‘the past is prologue.’ Anything that brought you to me cannot be so bad.”

She squeezed his hand for a moment. The room lightened to ghostly, the horse-head knot blinked at her memory.

“I was sixteen. I met a boy.” She felt Simcha skip a breath, but she went on. “His name was Lucas. We met at a synagogue dance, while he was visiting a cousin on our street. He had the deepest brown eyes, the longest lashes, the smoothest skin, the … ” She covered her eyes with her hand as his fingers tensed “I’m sorry, Emil.” She twisted her body violently, pressed her face into his neck. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Go on with your story.”

“You know that I belong to you now.”

“Yes.”

She touched his beard. This close, the graying hairs were a blur.

“We began to spend time together. We fell in love. When we were eighteen, he wanted us to marry. I had won admittance to Göttingen, which was difficult for girls. And for Jews. I told him I wanted to go to medical school, that we could marry afterward. He was very smart, interested in ideas. I suggested he come with me, study philosophy. We could be together until we received our degrees, then return to Berlin and marry. My father knew some of the faculty, and he managed to get Luke a late admission.

“He lived across the city. The day we were to leave for Göttingen, with our trunks of clothing, we were to meet at the coach station. It would be a long ride, with two nights spent at inns. My father took me to the coach house in his carriage. The morning skies were gray, I remember, and as we neared the station a light rain began to fall. We were early. Father and his driver put my heavy trunk in the waiting coach. I watched from a bench on a covered porch as four gray horses, each a different shade, were watered, and hitched to the coach. Every twenty miles we would stop at a post station to get fresh horses, the driver said. On the second day we would get a new coachman as well. I had never been far from Berlin, I was interested in what he was saying. Then I looked at my watch. It was almost time for the coach to leave. My heart started racing. Lucas had not yet arrived.”

She looked at Simcha. He was listening intently, though saying nothing.

“Two other passengers had appeared, two merchants, or bankers, in black coats and white stockings, with white lace jabots at their necks. They, too, would be traveling to Göttingen. I left the bench and stood at the edge of the platform and peered down the road. The rain was heavier now. There was no sign of Lucas. I grabbed my father’s arm, asked where Lucas was. He had no idea, of course.

“I saw one of the merchants look at his watch. I hurried inside to the driver, told him that my betrothed — I exaggerated, we were not officially betrothed — I told him my betrothed was coming as well, had bought a ticket, and would be along any moment. Checking his own watch, the driver said he could delay the departure five minutes, no more. That was a rule of the company, he said. In Berlin they are very punctual.

“I ran outside. I was becoming frantic. I ran a down the road in the rain, as if that would make Lucas appear. I was not thinking clearly, as you might imagine. I was wearing a large straw hat, bright yellow, tied under my chin with a green ribbon, and the rain rolled off it, wetting mostly my shoulders, and the hem of my dress. It was a white dress, the hem turning dark in the rain, just as my life was, I remember thinking. I climbed back onto the platform and asked my father, Where is he? Where is he? How was my father to know?