People of the Book (11 page)

Serif’s superior was Dr. Josip Boscovic, a Croatian who managed to negotiate an appearance of complicity with the Ustashe regime in Zagreb while remaining a Sarajevan in his heart. Boscovic had been a curator in old coins before moving into the museum’s administration. He was a popular figure in Sarajevo, a fixture at cultural events. His dark hair was slicked back with a highly scented pomade, and his weekly appointment with his manicurist was an immutable rite.

When Faber sent word that he intended to visit the museum, Boscovic realized that his tightrope walk was about to begin in earnest. His own German was poor, so he called Serif into his office and told him he would be needed to translate. He and Serif had different backgrounds and different intellectual interests. But the two men shared the same fierce commitment to Bosnian history and a love for the diversity that had shaped that history. They also shared an unstated recognition that Faber stood for the extinction of diversity.

“Do you know what he wants?” Serif asked.

“He did not say. But I think we can guess. My colleague in Zagreb told me that they looted the museum’s Judaica collection. You know, and I know, that what we have here is infinitely more important. I believe he wants the haggadah.”

“Josip, we can’t give it to him. He will destroy it, as his men have destroyed every Jewish thing in the city.”

“Serif, friend, what choice have we? He might not destroy it. I have heard talk that Hitler plans a Museum of the Lost Race, to exhibit the finest Jewish objects, after the people themselves are gone….”

Serif slapped the back of the chair in front of him. “Is there no limit to the depravity of these people?”

“Shhh.” Boscovic raised both hands to quiet his colleague. He dropped his own voice to a whisper. “They were joking about it, in Zagreb last month. They called it
Judenforschung ohne Juden
—Jewish Studies Without Jews.” Boscovic stepped from behind his desk and laid a hand on Serif’s shoulder. “If you try to hide this book, you put your life at risk.”

Serif regarded him gravely. “What choice have I? I am
kustos.
Did it survive five hundred years to be destroyed under my stewardship? If you think I can allow such a thing, my friend, you do not know me.”

“Do what you must do then. But be quick, I beg you.”

Serif returned to the library. With hands that shook, he drew out a box he had labeled ARCHIV DER FAMILIE KAPETANOVIC—TÜRKISCHE URKUNDEN (Archives of the Kapetanovic Family—Turkish Document)s. He lifted a few old Turkish land title deeds from the top of the box. Underneath were several Hebrew codices. He lifted out the smallest one and tucked it under the belt of his trousers, pulling down his coat so that it concealed the bulge. He returned the Turkish deeds to the box and resealed it.

Faber was a spare man, small boned and not particularly tall. He had a gentle voice that he rarely raised much above a whisper, so that people had to pay close attention when he spoke. His eyes were the cool, opaque green of agate stone, set in skin pale and as translucent as the flesh of a fish.

Josip had risen as an administrator because of a charming manner that sometimes bordered on unctuousness. As he greeted the general with a courtly welcome, no one would have known that the back of his neck prickled with nervous sweat. He excused his poor German, apologizing far more profusely than necessary. Serif appeared at the door then, and Josip introduced him. “My colleague is a great linguist; he puts me to shame.”

Serif approached the general and offered his hand. The general’s grip was unexpectedly soft. Serif felt the flaccid hand lying loosely in his. He was aware of the manuscript shifting slightly against his waist.

Faber did not state the purpose of his visit. In an awkward silence, Josip offered a tour of the collections. As they walked through the vaulted halls, Serif gave an erudite account of the various exhibits while Faber paced behind him, slapping his black leather gloves against a pale white palm and saying nothing.

When they arrived at the library, Faber nodded curtly and spoke for the first time. “Let me see your Jewish manuscripts and incunabula.” Shaking slightly, Serif selected volumes from the shelves and laid them on the long table. There was a mathematics text of Elia Mizrahi’s, a rare edition of a Hebrew-Arabic-Latin vocabulary published in Naples in 1488, a Talmud volume printed in Venice.

Faber’s pale hands caressed each volume. He turned the pages with exquisite care. As he fingered the rarest of the codices, peering at the faded inks and delicate, veined parchments, his expression changed. He moistened his lips. Serif noted that his pupils were dilated, like a lover’s. Serif looked away. He felt a mixture of disgust and violation, as if he were witness to a pornographic spectacle. Finally, Faber closed the binding of the Venetian Talmud and looked up, his brow raised in a question.

“And now, if you please, the haggadah.”

Serif felt a rivulet of scalding sweat run down his back. He turned up his palms and shrugged. “That’s impossible, Herr General,” he said.

Josip’s face, which had been flushed, turned quite pale.

“What do you mean, ‘impossible’?” Faber’s quiet voice was cold.

“What my colleague means,” said Josip, “is that one of your officers came here yesterday and requested the haggadah. He said it was wanted for a particular museum project of the Führer’s. Of course, we were honored to give him our treasure for such a purpose….”

Serif began to translate Josip’s words, but the general interrupted him.

“Which officer? Give me his name.” He stepped toward Josip. Despite his slight build, the general suddenly seemed to ooze menace. Josip took a step backward, knocking against the bookshelves.

“Sir, he did not give me his name. I…I…did not feel it was my place to ask it…. But if you would come with me to my office, I might be able to give you the paper he signed for me, as a receipt.”

As Serif translated his director’s words, Faber sucked in his breath. “Very well.” He turned on his heel and headed for the door. Josip had only an instant to exchange a glance with Serif. He made it the most eloquent glance of his life. Then, in a voice as calm as a lake on a still day, Serif called after the general. “Please, sir, follow the director. He will lead you to the main stair.”

Serif knew he had very little time. He hoped he had divined the director’s plan correctly. He scribbled out a receipt with the haggadah’s catalog numbers and then, in a different pen, signed below them in an illegible scrawl. He called for a porter and told the man to take the paper to the director’s office. “Use the service stair, and be as quick as you can. Put it on his desk where he can see it the instant he walks in.”

Then, deliberately, forcing himself to slow his movements, he walked to the hat stand and reached for his overcoat and fez. He sauntered out of the library and across the hall to the museum’s main entrance. He made eye contact with Faber’s waiting entourage, nodding in acknowledgment of their presence. Halfway down the museum stair, he stopped to confer with a colleague who was ascending. He passed the large black staff car waiting at the curb. Smiling and greeting his acquaintances, he stopped at his favorite café. He sipped his coffee slowly, as a real Bosnian is supposed to, savoring every drop. Then, and only then, he headed for home.

As Serif turned the pages of the haggadah, Lola gasped at the splendor of the illuminations.

“You should be very proud of this,” he said to her. “It is a great work of art that your people have given the world.”

Stela wrung her hands and said something in Albanian. Serif looked at her, his expression firm and yet kindly. He answered in Bosnian. “I know you are concerned, my dear. And you have every right to be. We already shelter a Jew, and now a Jewish book. Both very much wanted by the Nazis. A young life and an ancient artifact. Both very precious. And you say that you do not care about the risk to yourself, and for that I commend you, and am proud. But you fear for our son. And what you fear is very real. I, too, fear for him. I have made plans for Leila with a friend of mine. Tomorrow, we will meet him. He will guide her to a family in the Italian zone who can keep her safe.”

“But what about the book?” said Stela. “Surely the general will uncover your deception. After they search the museum, won’t they come here?”

“Don’t worry,” said Serif calmly. “It is by no means certain he will uncover us. Dr. Boscovic had the presence of mind to tell Faber one of his men had come for the book. The Nazis are looters at heart. Faber knows that his officers are schooled in theft. He probably has a half dozen men he believes capable of having stolen the book to enrich themselves. And in any case,” he said, wrapping the small volume in its cloth, “after tomorrow, it will not be here.”

“Where will you take it?” said Stela.

“I am not sure. The best place to hide a book might be in a library.” He had thought about simply returning the book to the museum, misshelving it somewhere among the many thousands of volumes. But then he recalled another library, much smaller, where he had spent many happy hours studying at the side of a dear friend. He turned to Stela and smiled. “I will take it,” he said, “to the last place anyone would think to look.”

The next day was Friday, the Muslim Sabbath. Serif went to work as usual, but excused himself at midday, saying he wished to attend the communal prayers. He returned to his home to collect Stela, Habib, and Lola. Instead of heading for the local mosque, he drove out of the city, up into the mountains. Lola held Habib during the drive, playing his favorite games of peep-o and handy pandy, drawing him close whenever she could, trying to memorize the smell of his head, which reminded her of the sweet fragrance of mown grass. The road was a difficult one, narrow and switchbacked. Now, in midsummer, the light was as rich as butter, golden on the small fields of wheat and sunflowers that filled each sliver of flatland between the swift, steep rises of the mountains. When winter came, the snows would make these ways impassable until spring thaw. Lola concentrated on Habib to stop herself from feeling nauseated by the car’s movement and by her own anxiety. She knew it was wise to leave the city, where the risk that she would be discovered was constant. But she hated to leave the Kamals. Despite the grief she carried and the fear that stalked her, the four months in their household had brought her a serenity she’d never experienced before.

It was sunset when they came through the final narrow pass and saw the village open like a flower in its small hanging valley. A farmer was bringing his cows in from the fields, and the call to evening prayer mingled with the whine and groan of the moving cattle. Up here, in the isolation of the mountains, the war and its privations seemed very far away.

Serif stopped the car at a low stone house. The walls were white, each stone laid alongside the next with the precision of an elaborate jigsaw puzzle. The deep, niched windows were tall and narrow, with thick shutters, painted cerulean blue, that could be closed against winter storms. Wild larkspur, a deeper blue, grew in profusion around the building. A pair of butterflies drifted lazily amid the blossoms. An old mulberry tree spread its boughs over the courtyard. As soon as the car pulled up, a half dozen small faces peeped out of the glossy foliage. The tree was thick with children, perched on its branches like bright birds.

One by one, the children dropped out of the tree and swarmed around Serif, who had brought a sweet for each of them. From the cottage, a slightly older girl, her face veiled like Stela’s, emerged, rebuking the children for the ruckus. “But Uncle Serif is here!” the children cried excitedly, and Lola could see the girl’s eyes smiling over her veil.

“Welcome, most welcome!” she said. “Father has not yet returned from the mosque, but my brother Munib is inside. Please, come, and be comfortable.” Munib, a scholarly looking youth of about nineteen, was seated at a desk, magnifying glass in one hand, tweezers in the other, carefully mounting an insect specimen. The table shimmered with fragments of wings.

Munib turned as his sister called to him, looking cross that his concentration had been disturbed. But his expression changed when he saw Serif. “Sir! What an unexpected honor.” Serif, knowing his friend’s son’s great passion for insects, had secured work for Munib as an assistant in the museum’s natural history department during school vacations.

“I am glad to see that you keep up with your study, despite the difficult times,” Serif said. “I know your father still hopes to send you to the university one day.”

“Insha’Allah,”
Munib said.

As Serif took a seat on a low couch under an arched window, Munib’s sister ushered Stela and Lola into the women’s parlor, as the younger children carried in a seemingly endless parade of trays: grape juice, pressed from the family’s own vines, tea—a rarity now in the city—homegrown cucumbers, and handmade pastries.

So Lola was not present when Serif Kamal asked his good friend, Munib’s father, the village
khoja,
to hide the haggadah. She did not see the enthusiasm on the
khoja
’s face as he impatiently brushed aside his son’s work to clear a space on the table for the manuscript, or the wonder in his eyes as he turned its pages. The sun had set, bathing the room in a warm red afterglow. Tiny motes shimmered and danced in the fading light. As a child entered carrying a tray of tea, one small piece of butterfly wing rose on the slight breeze from the open door and fluttered to rest, unnoticed, on the haggadah’s open page.

Serif and the
khoja
took the haggadah into the library of the mosque. They found it a narrow place on a high shelf, pressed between volumes of Islamic law. The last place anyone would think of looking.

Later that night, the Kamals drove back down the mountain. They stopped just outside the city, at a fine house with a high stone wall. Serif turned to Stela. “Say good-bye now. We can’t linger here.” Lola and Stela embraced. “Farewell, my sister,” Stela said. “God keep you safe until we meet again.” Lola’s throat closed, and she could not answer. She kissed the baby’s head and handed him to his mother, then she followed Serif into the dark.