The Origin of Sorrow (20 page)

He found Eva waiting as planned. “Danks Gott they didn’t find you in the park.”

“I hid in bushes. They didn’t come near. Is that it?”

He nodded as he set it down, stripped off his wet clothing and put on the dry ones he’d left with her. The wet he wrapped around the severed head. They circled a deserted block and approached the north gate as if returning from the Fair. Eva cradled the baby. Ephraim held up his bundle to the guard. “They wouldn’t let us go to our stall. Said we should restock our wares in the morning. What would it have hurt them if we … ”

The guard was not interested in their problem. He waved them through the gate.

The coffin was waiting on the cobbles outside Yussel Kahn’s shop. Together, with one hand each, they lifted the lid. Ephraim placed the head carefully inside. He lowered the lid, and with tools Yussel had left he hammered in one nail on each side — just enough so that a curious child couldn’t lift the lid in the morning.

That was the plan, but now he changed his mind; if the Constables did come into the lane, the lonely coffin was the first place they’d look. He pried up the lid, took the wrapped head out and carried it with him. In the rag shop he placed it on the floor in a corner and covered it with coats. The Constables would have to be searching every house in the lane to find it.

Back in their room, they thought they would be sick. Eva wrapped the baby in his basket, and set him snugly in the shop, as far away as she could from the severed head. She poured two glasses of sweet wine. Instead of being sick they soon were overwhelmed by exhilaration for what they had done. They stripped away their clothes and burned their remnant fears in a fierce and driving love, stifling their moans with practiced hands so as not to wake the child, or those in the apartments on either side, or those above.

17

Portraits of Rashi and Rabbi Akiba and Maimonides looked down from the walls in the dining room, rich in woods and leathers. Guttle had never been in such a fine room before. Her eyes kept roaming, absorbing the furnishings, the velvet draperies, the cabinet filled with fine china, the glistening gold menorah. None of it belonged to Rabbi Eleazar, she knew — it went with the Chief Rabbi’s house.

“Tell me,” he was saying to the new Doctor, “if your family is from Berlin, where there is a fine university, I’m told, why did you choose to study in Göttingen?”

Guttle watched as Doctor Rebecca Kirsch chewed the last of her forshpice — her appetizer — before answering. It was too good to leave even a bite: a mix of small balls of ground meat with cabbage, in a sweet sauce such as Guttle had never tasted. She would have to ask her mother to make it; better still, request the recipe from the Rabbi’s wife after dinner, if she were feeling brave, and try to make it herself.

Doctor Kirsch pressed her lips with her napkin, daintily yet firmly, Guttle noticed, as befitting a woman and a Doctor. “Göttingen is far more modern. Far more advanced.”

She had black hair that was piled atop her head with pins, a curved ivory comb at the back. Her face was striking, with hollows in her cheeks that set off dark brown eyes. Her face retained the color of the outside world. Her fitted dress was satin, a rich, solid green.

“Advanced in what sense?” Rabbi Simcha asked.

“Well, they admit Jews. And women. Throughout the university, not just to the medical school.”

“How did they manage that?” Meyer Amschel asked.

Gilda, the Chief Rabbi’s wife, a black and white dotted babushka tied over her brown wig, was clearing the appetizer plates. Guttle, wearing her best white silk Sabbath blouse — breaking, for this occasion, Frankfurt’s rules — thought to help, but she wanted to hear the answer.

“As you may know,” Doctor Kirsch said, toying with her fork, “most universities have four divisions: theology, philosophy, science and medicine. Theology ranks at the top, and has the power of censorship over the others. It can keep out Jews, Calvinists, any religion it doesn’t like. At Göttingen they declared all four divisions to be equal. This removed theology’s right of censorship. Now anyone can attend.”

“Why do you suppose they did that?” Lev Berkov asked.

“Because it’s in line with the new thinking that’s — how shall I say it? — beginning to ride in on the wind, from France, from England.”

Gilda set a plate of boiled beef flanken with onions and potatoes in front of her husband. “Did you hear that, Gilda? After four thousand years, new thinking. I’m not sure I want to hear about it, Doctor. But if it’s good news for the Jews, go ahead.”

“It’s a simple idea, but it’s considered radical by some. It’s what the French philosophers —Voltaire, Diderot, others — have been talking about for years. The idea that all people are equal. Rich and poor, nobleman and peasant, Christian and Jew.”

Meyer leaned back in his seat while the Rabbi’s wife set down his plate. “How is that possible? For instance, how can rich and poor be equal? That is a contradiction.”

“And Christian and Jew,” the Chief Rabbi said, chewing on his beef. “How can we be equal, when our culture is far superior? When the Gentiles around us are only a few centuries removed from barbarians.”

“Some of them not that much,” Rabbi Simcha said.

Rebecca Kirsch smiled. Nervous, Guttle dared to speak, the first comment she had offered. “In this advanced thinking, are men and women equal? I shouldn’t think so.”

Doctor Kirsch nodded and said “no” at the same time. “I’m afraid it’s not that advanced.”

“Of course not,” the Chief Rabbi said. “Men and women can never be equal. Yahweh created them to be different.”

His wife, who also had been silent till then, spoke as she took her seat. “This equalness is what they are teaching at the universities? Better our children should stay home. Not get meshuganah ideas.”

The others began to cut into their boiled beef. The knives made squeaking sounds on the plates. Guttle could see that Doctor Kirsch was frustrated, that she did not want the conversation to end there.

“Perhaps I did not make clear what I meant by equal,” the Doctor said. “Take rich and poor, as Herr Rothschild pointed out. A poor man will never be equal to a rich man in the things he can own. But they can be equal before the state. In an ideal society there would be no nobles, and no peasants. No one would be considered superior to anyone else as a matter of birth. Instead there would be what is being called a meritocracy. People would rise to prominence, to government service, on their own merits, not on their grandfather’s blood lines. No matter how far they rose in terms of wealth, they still would have no more say than the poorest man in choosing the parliament, or in facing the courts. In matters of justice, for instance.”

As they all listened intently, Rabbi Simcha closed his eyes, and seemed to be smiling at some inner vision.

“Look how things are now,” Doctor Kirsch continued. “The nobles have power to influence the Empress. The peasants don’t. The peasants are quite literally owned by the Princes. In Kassel, which is just twelve kilometres from Göttingen, Landgrave Friedrich conscripts the peasants into his army. He hires out his army to whatever country is fighting a war. The Prince gets paid, so much for each soldier supplied, so much for each one killed, so much for each one wounded. There is talk — in the wind, as I said — that the British colonists in America are tired of paying taxes to their king. There is talk they might rebel, and fight to have their own independent country. Should that happen, Friedrich most likely would lease his army to the British king, to fight his own colonists. No matter who wins that war, the Landgrave will become very rich from the blood of his peasants. And he’s rather rich already.”

Meyer, sitting to Guttle’s right, discreetly squeezed her hand.

“A lot of farmers will die,” Lev Berkov said.

“In a war in which they have no stake,” Rabbi Simcha added.

“It’s the way of the world,” the Chief Rabbi said, mashing a piece of potato in his mouth. “A new idea doesn’t change the way things are.”

“Sometimes it does,” Guttle blurted. “Look what Jesus did.”

Silence struck the table like a storm. Guttle bit her lip, trying to bite back the words. The others, all except Doctor Kirsch, looked at their plates. Meyer Amschel rescued her. “That may be an unpleasant thought, but we all know it’s the truth. Some ideas have power. If you go back further, the Jewish concept of one God swept across the world like a conflagration. It burned the pagan Gods to ash. It relegated them to myth.”

“The problem is, even false ideas can flourish — like the premature Messiah,” Rabbi Simcha said.

“Are you saying this concept of human equality is false?” Doctor Kirsch asked.

“Not at all. It’s a wonderful notion. Just a bit … fanciful, perhaps.”

Guttle, still upset with herself over her comment, was finding the beef hard to chew; some of the others were also. The Rabbi’s wife noticed. “We have baked apples for dessert,” she said, “so leave room. If I gave too much meat, you don’t have to finish.”

A sense of relaxation moved inaudibly around the table. Exhilarated though she was by these new arguments, Guttle realized she had just learned from the rebbetzin a lesson in grace. Her mother felt insulted if people didn’t finish everything.

“If I may change the subject slightly,” Meyer said, addressing the new Doctor, “Göttingen is a small town. How did it manage to build a university?”

“It didn’t. There is only one building. The instructors teach in their homes. Very effectively.”

“If I may change the subject even more,” the Chief Rabbi said, “there is one other question I am curious about. I understand from Doctor Berkov that your credentials are impeccable. That being the case, there are many cities in which you could have gone to practice. Why did you come to us? To the Judengasse? Where you will be locked in at night, on Sundays, and so forth?”

“My father’s answer is that I’m meshuganah. He may be right.” She smiled, and put down her fork. “Seriously, I think there is a unique opportunity here to study what affects people’s health. In addition to treating the sick along with Doctor Berkov, of course. The walls and the gates are terrible things, but medically, they provide a laboratory that could be useful.”

“In what way?” Meyer asked.

“For instance, Rabbi Simcha was kind enough this morning to let me look through the Memory Book. Two things struck me at once. The first is that you have a terrible rate of infant deaths here. More than half the babies born alive die during the first year. Most in the first few weeks. The rate is high everywhere, but not as high as in the Judengasse. What is the cause of that? It becomes especially intriguing when you note, as I saw in the book, that a great number of the people here live to a very old age. Not only into their seventies, but into their eighties and even their nineties. This is very unusual.”

“So you see a contradiction,” Doctor Berkov said.

“Not so much a contradiction as a puzzle. There is something going on here that kills babies. But those infants who survive seem more fit to live a long life. Are these connected? Does it have to do with the sanitary conditions? With the diet? With the mere fact of being Jewish?”

“And you hope to find out?” the Chief Rabbi asked.

“Not really. I’m a Doctor, not a natural scientist. But exciting work is being done in science and medicine at the universities. Not only across Ashkenaz, but in England, in Denmark. I hope to keep up with the latest findings, and see if any of them apply here.”

When nobody jumped in with a comment, Guttle summoned her courage. “Doctor Kirsch, something has been troubling me ever since I read it in Deuteronomy a few months ago.”

“There’s a lot that’s troublesome in Deuteronomy,” Rabbi Simcha said.

The Chief Rabbi gave him a harsh look. Guttle continued.

“It said that if mothers don’t follow all of Yahweh’s laws, their children will die. Do you think that could be what’s happening in the lane, why so many babies die?”

“That’s a good question, Guttle,” the Chief Rabbi said. “I would like to hear your answer to that, Doctor.”

“As I said before, I have no idea what’s causing these deaths. Let’s say I’m willing to accept that explanation — until we find a better one.”

“Please hurry,” Guttle said. But she had a morsel of tough beef in her mouth and was not understood.

“What was that? Speak up, young lady,” the Chief Rabbi said. “We’re interested in your opinion as well.”

“I said, I hope they find a different explanation soon. Before I get married.” They all laughed amiably; she wasn’t sure she had been joking. “There are a lot of Yahweh’s laws to follow in Deuteronomy. Also in Leviticus.”

“You know your Torah,” Rabbi Simcha said.

“But I don’t trust that I can keep all the rules.”

“Sounds to me as if you’ll do just fine.”

She hesitated, then spoke again. “Can I ask one last question?”

“Of course. You see, Doctor Kirsch, what inquiring minds we have here in the lane.”

“So I’d heard. That was another attraction.”

“What was your question?” Doctor Berkov said to Guttle.

She wiped her hands on her napkin. Gilda Eleazar was setting a huge baked apple in front of each of the diners, and a glass of tea

“At the Fair today,” Guttle said, “an innocent man was hanged. He was a Jew. Because he wore a yarmulke, right to his death, I imagine he put his faith in Yahweh, as we all are taught to do. But if that’s true, then Yahweh failed him. How are we to keep our faith in a Gott who allows such things — who lets us be confined to the Judengasse?”

The host toyed with his baked apple, then set down his spoon. “That is a question that has been with us since Job. Or before. It comes to most of us at some difficult time in our lives.” He lifted the spoon, set it down again, took a sip of tea. “There is no doubt that terrible things happen. It is also true that all things, good and bad, emanate from Adonai. We can’t deny that. We can’t pick and choose what we ascribe to the Almighty. The only answer I have is a simple one. If we do not trust in Him who created the heavens and the earth, and gave us life, then in whom should we trust?”

“What about ourselves?” The comment came from the lady Doctor.

The Chief Rabbi’s face darkened to a deep red. He pointed his spoon in her direction. “You may be fresh from the university, Rachel Kirsch, but that comment is close to blasphemy.”

“It’s Rebecca,” the Doctor said.

Rabbi Simcha stood at his place. “Perhaps that is an answer — this lack of faith in Yahweh — that’s also coming in the wind, as the Doctor has intimated. And perhaps in a way it answers part of Guttle’s question. Perhaps Yahweh has placed us Jews within high walls so we’ll be protected from these winds.”

“Exactly so,” the Chief Rabbi said. “Very good, Simcha. A postulation I had never considered in just that way. A new view of the walls, in fact. Perhaps a subject for my yeshiva class, where this Mendelssohn fellow seems to have a following. But now we have such sweet-smelling baked apples in front of us, I suggest we drop serious subjects. We’ll tell some clever stories, to smooth the digestion.”

Strolling home slowly, Guttle and Meyer discussed the evening. Somewhere above them was a half moon they could not see, providing just enough glare to outline the tops of the tenements. The lane was deserted, most people had gone to bed with the dark, as usual, so as not to burn much oil.

“The new Doctor seems very smart,” Guttle said.

“Very intelligent. Making an enemy of the Chief Rabbi was not very smart.”

“All she did was speak her mind. You like it when I speak my mind.”

“You say different things.”

“Dvorah wants to marry Lev Berkov. Do you think the new Doctor will be in her way?”

“Doctor Kirsch seems very serious. She came here to work. I doubt that marriage and children are on her mind. Besides, she’s too intelligent for Lev.”

“You think he’s not intelligent?”

“He’s very intelligent. But he thinks he’s smart enough for two people. He wants Dvorah only for her body.”

“What a terrible thing to say.”

“I’m just speaking my mind.”

“Is that why you want me? For my body?”

“I want you for your tantalizing soul.”

“Oh.”