Burning Twilight (13 page)
Authors: Kenneth Wishnia
Tags: #Historical, #Fiction, #General, #Mystery & Detective
He closed his fist around the pig’s ears and prepared to cut its throat. The animal bucked and squealed, but Anya held tight.
She couldn’t help thinking of the
shoykhet
’s blessing before the
sh’khiteh
—the swift cut to the neck meant to minimize the animal’s suffering.
Borukh atoh Adinoy, eloyheynu melekh ha-oylem . . .
When it was over, Benesh wiped the bloody knife with a rag. Not like the crude men who wiped the blood on their sleeves and spent the day surrounded by swarms of buzzing flies. He took some pride in his appearance.
Anya wiped her hands with the rag, and helped her father lift the carcass onto a slotted table so he could gut it. But first they had to carry a fresh side of beef into the shop. Benesh grunted from the effort.
He said, “We need you to marry someone quick. I’m getting too old to haul a side of beef onto the slab by myself.”
He was half-joking, but the joke had been going on for a few months now. Still, she tolerated it.
She said, “Yes, father,” tossed the bloody apron into the washtub, and went into the kitchen to wash her hands before they got too sticky.
Her mother Jirzhina was rolling out the dough for
knedlíky
, special Easter dumplings.
“Anya, I need you to hang this up for me,” she said, nodding toward a bun with a cross baked into it.
Anya washed and dried her hands. She took a knife, got up on a stool, and cut down last year’s Good Friday bun. Then she hung the new one from the ceiling to protect their home from fire for another year.
Her mother told her to open the shop and sweep it out.
Anya said, “I’m supposed to be at the Meisels’ place as early as possible.”
“Why do they need you? It’s Friday.”
“It’s Pesach. It’s their Easter.”
“Their Easter starts on Friday?”
“At sundown. They asked me to help out today.”
Her mother considered this. “They pay you the same?”
“Yes.”
Jirzhina shrugged. The Jews paid well. But still.
Anya said, “What?”
“Nothing. Janoshik said he might be coming by.”
Anya said nothing.
“You don’t like him?”
“He’s all right, Mama. But sometimes he can be such a
balvan
, like he’s got rocks in his head.”
“Better a boring man who stays with you than a thrilling horseman who leaves you with a baby.”
“Don’t worry, Mama.”
“I’m not worried about you. It’s them.”
Jirzhina aimed her rolling pin at the street, where drunken mercenaries were passing by, singing dirty songs.
Legions of foot soldiers,
Reiters
, and musketeers from the Turkish front had swarmed into Prague on Holy Thursday, and hadn’t wasted any time tearing the town up. Fortunately, the town was big enough to absorb the shock, Anya thought. She told her mother that she would be careful.
She went upstairs to finish braiding her hair, but there wasn’t time for that now. So she gathered her long black hair and tied it back with a lace ribbon. She had to look good for the rich folks. Back downstairs, she put on a clean apron and opened the shutters and the heavy wooden door to the shop.
The neighbors were already yelling at each other, Ivana Kromy’s shrill voice cutting through whatever protests her husband Josef barked at her.
Anya wondered how people could be so angry with each other before they even had their morning porridge. It took most people a good part of the day to build up to a fury like that.
She swept out the rear of the shop, keeping an eye out for the beggars who relied on true believers like Benesh Cervenka for a bit of Good Friday generosity. She also watched out for thieves and other lowlifes who thought that the best cure for warts was to steal a slice of beef, rub it on the afflicted area, then toss the beef down a privy hole, so that when it rotted, all their scabby warts would fall off.
Why couldn’t the recipe start out with
buying
a piece of beef? No, it had to be stolen for the magic to work properly.
She felt the floor shift under a man’s weight, and she turned around. Janoshik was leaning on the counter, a toothy smile on his round peasant face.
“Hey, cutie. Want to go see the pageant in the Old Town Square?”
Anya said, “Sorry, the Meisels need me today.”
He was disappointed. “You’re always working for those
Zhids
.”
“They’re not so bad. And it’s only one day a week.”
“Right. And that’s supposed to be Saturday. Today is Friday.”
She explained for the second time this morning that today was a special day for the Jews.
“Seems like everything’s special if it’s about them,” he said. “So what kind of spells do they use to clean their meat?”
He meant the koshering process.
“No spells. They just soak the meat in water, drain it, sprinkle it with coarse salt to remove the blood, then wash it a couple of times. That’s it.”
“There’s no way that that’s it. They’ve got secret magical words for everything.”
“They just praise God before they do anything.”
“So now you know Jewish prayers? Who’s teaching you?”
“Janoshik, please—”
“No, really. I want to know where you’re learning all this Jewish magic.”
“They say the same ten words about fifty times a day, that’s all. I’m used to hearing it.”
He glared at her.
She said, “They kill a cow, they praise God. They cover its blood with dirt, they praise God. They wash their hands, they praise God. They cut a slice of bread, they praise God. They take a wizz—they praise God. Get it?”
“I get it. You’re turning into a secret Jew.”
Her reply got sucked right down her throat. He might as well have accused her of killing cattle with sorcery. The Church moved swiftly against anyone accused of “Judaizing” beliefs, and the punishment was death by public burning. How could he say such a thing so carelessly?
She swept the floor with renewed furor, thinking about the way the Catholics had been sweeping through Bohemia, reclaiming the land for the one true faith. One powerful sweep sent the pile of dust swirling into the gutter.
She was putting the broom away when a fragment of a faraway plea floated past her ears:
“. . . ertaaaaah . . . !”
Anya stopped what she was doing.
“Anya, let me—”
She shushed him, but the cry was not repeated.
“Anya, I didn’t mean . . .”
To what? Accuse her of heresy?
Her father brought in a tray of meat from the newly killed pig.
She said, “Excuse me, I have a customer.”
She had several customers. An old woman bought a slice of beef liver so thin you could almost see through it. A kitchen maid named Erika, on her way back from the fish market with a basket full of eels, selected the best cuts of pork for her master, Janoš Kopecky, one of the richest burghers in the neighborhood. A couple of old beggars came for a handout while Janoshik stood and watched silently. A tipsy cavalryman picked out a couple of eggs and counted the coins into her hand so slowly Anya thought he was going to pass out on the street, until she realized that he was taking his time so he could look her over with an expert eye. Fine. Let him look.
She even gave a coquettish swish of her behind as she walked to the back of the shop to get some fresh pork.
A Jesuit priest in a long black cassock stopped and stared.
When she came back carrying a side of ribs, the priest raised an accusing finger. “Aren’t you supposed to be closed today?”
“Protestants buy meat, too, Father.”
The priest stepped up to the counter. He was relatively young, but Anya saw that he was as stone-faced and humorless as any fossilized Church elder.
“I suppose you have a dispensation to sell to Hussites and Utraquists?”
What did he want? Money?
“What is it, Anya?” Her father stepped into the shop, wiping more pig’s blood on a rag.
“I’d like to know why you are open for business on the most somber day of the year.”
“People like to buy for the next day, Father.”
“That’s not what she just said.”
Anya lowered her eyes from her father’s sideways glance.
Janoshik cleared his throat. “Say, father, isn’t there a law that says Jews can’t have Christian servants working for them?”
Anya felt a cold needle prick her heart.
The priest looked at Janoshik.
“Yes, my son. The Holy Fathers have issued more than one decree condemning that absurd practice. But we all know it still goes on,” he said, looking around the shop with renewed suspicion.
Benesh tried to assure the priest. “Father, we are simple Christians. We close at midday, then we’ll go to Mass, do the stations of the Cross, and have fish
knedlícky
after sundown.”
The neighbor’s door burst open. Josef Kromy was still yelling at his wife. Something about his breakfast not being hot enough. Then he slammed the door and stormed off.
Anya used this momentary distraction to step into the back and slip off her butcher’s apron.
Benesh poked his head in the back room.
He said, “If there’s any of that meat the Jews want to get rid of because the animals aren’t quite kosher enough . . .”
“Yes, father. I know.”
She hurried down Haštalská Street toward the Jewish Town, thinking about the mess she had left behind and how much of it would still be waiting for her when she got back at the end of the day. Then she heard it again, a howling like a trapped animal:
“Gertaaaaaah—!”
KENNETH WISHNIA is the award-winning author of
The Fifth Servant
, and his crime fiction has been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony, and Macavity awards. He has a Ph.D. in comparative literature and teaches composition, literature, and creative writing at Suffolk Community College on Long Island, where he lives with his wife and children.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Portions of this text were originally published in
Alfred Hitchock’s Mystery Magazine
.
Excerpt from
The Fifth Servant
copyright © 2010 by Kenneth Wishnia.
BURNING TWILIGHT.
Copyright © 2013 by Kenneth Wishnia. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition NOVEMBER 2013 ISBN: 9780062321138
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