The Way Back

by Gavriel Savit

  “Are you all right?”

  Sudden tears filled Bluma’s eyes. “I don’t understand,” she said. “I don’t know how you can go toward that place on purpose. It hurts.”

  Yehuda Leib gave a heavy sigh. “It’s just…,” he said. “That I don’t think I have a choice.”

  “Of course you do,” said Bluma. “Of course. You could get as far away as possible.”

  “Yes,” said Yehuda Leib. “But someone very smart once told me that there’s no running fast enough.”

  Bluma made a sound that had not yet decided whether it would be a chuckle or a sob.

  “There are just so many things I still need to know.”

  “Like what?” said Bluma.

  Yehuda Leib’s cheek bunched up, his lips tightening. How could he possibly manage to answer this question sufficiently?

  Because he wanted to know so much: what his father had liked to eat and drink, say, or which colors had appealed to him, what songs he’d known. He wanted to watch his father build a fire in the family hearth, wanted to see him in a fight. And there were questions, too, questions that he wanted to ask: What had his father’s childhood been like? Had he, too, been an unpopular boy? He wanted to know where his father had traveled, what he had seen, which battles he’d fought in; he wanted to know why he hadn’t come back home as soon as he possibly could.

  Yet all he managed was a shrug. “Everything,” he said.

  “But, Yehuda Leib,” said Bluma. “It’s different when the Dark One is coming for you. Do you know what that feels like?”

  Now Yehuda Leib thought of the dead end in Zubinsk, of the smell of rot and vodka.

  “I think so,” he said.

  “Don’t you want to do anything you can to avoid it happening again?”

  Yehuda Leib nodded. “That’s what I’m doing.”

  Bluma let out a deep sigh. “Me too.”

  And all of a sudden, Yehuda Leib remembered the two sides of the cold coin in his pocket: on one, an eye stretched open; on the other, the same eye squeezed shut.

  “Well,” said Yehuda Leib. “I hope one of us succeeds.”

  But now a violent shushing split the air.

  “Shhhhhhh!”

  Mammon was sitting up in his pram.

  There was a sound stirring nearby—like a million clocks ticking at uneven intervals.

  “What is it?” said Bluma, her obscure eyes wide.

  Mammon’s grin grew broad and toothy. “You’ve led us well,” he said. “That is the song of the Gallows.”

  Bluma swallowed hard.

  “Listen carefully,” said Mammon. “You must make no sound whatsoever within the Gallows Grove. You must remain absolutely silent. Do you understand?”

  Bluma and Yehuda Leib nodded together.

  “Splendid,” said Mammon. “Then let’s go.”

  * * *

  —

  At first the Gallows seemed to be no more than a small copse, each tree bearing one of the hanging dead.

  But this was only the beginning.

  Before long, the trees and their occupants began to grow thicker, trunks as densely grouped as in a forest, hanged men, women, children, four, five, six to a bough. The nooses here were not of knotted rope, but grew instead like stems from the very stuff of the leafless trees.

  There were empty nooses too, hanging and hungry. Yehuda Leib couldn’t quite help thinking one of them might rightfully belong to him.

  It was while staring up at just one such loop of knobby vine that, with a sick lurch in his stomach, Yehuda Leib realized:

  The eyes of the hanged man above him were open.

  And they were watching.

  Yehuda Leib wanted to back away, wanted to turn and flee, but beside him Bluma caught his attention, her own eyes set and determined.

  Yehuda Leib put his head down and pushed the carriage forward.

  The hanged were hung so thick that he had to shove his way bodily between them, shifting their bony limbs aside with every move he made. The blowing snow could not make its way in; even the starlight was unable.

  Thin fingers with skin like fraying paper twitched and clutched on every side.

  He had to turn back. This was going on too long.

  But at least he had the cold handle of the pram to hold on to, something outside himself to remind him that he’d had an existence before he entered the Gallows Grove.

  Bluma had no such reminder.

  And, with a shock, Yehuda Leib realized that they’d become separated. Where had she gone? He could no longer see her or hear her beside him, and he wanted to call out, to ensure that she was still near.

  “Bluma?” he whispered.

  All around him, the ears of the dead gaped and flexed at the sound.

  A soft, sharp shushing came from the pram before him, and quickly, Yehuda Leib recalled Mammon’s warning.

  He must continue on in silence.

  And after an interminable age of pushing through the suspended bodies of the dead, Yehuda Leib saw a glimmer of light ahead.

  He was nearing the end.

  Soon there was only one hanged man remaining between him and the Dead City: a tattered fellow, more bone than skin, in a long black coat and the bullet-pocked uniform of a soldier. A single gold tooth gleamed in his fixed and smiling face.

  But something was wrong.

  Everything was still.

  Bluma was not here.

  Where was Bluma?

  With a start, Yehuda Leib turned back over his shoulder. The only sign of life in the dense forest of the hanged was the swaying of bodies where he had pushed his way through, and, presently, even this stilled.

  Where was she? Where was Bluma?

  Ahead of him in the pram, Yehuda Leib heard Mammon whisper a thin warning: “Boy…,” he said.

  But now Yehuda Leib had begun to panic. Had she turned aside? Had she turned back? Had she been caught in one of the low-hanging nooses?

  “Bluma?” he called. “Bluma!”

  And his voice echoed out through the night as loudly as the report of a cannon:

  Bluma!

  Bluma!

  Bluma!

  Yehuda Leib heard Mammon let out a long, low sigh.

  Slowly, each and every one of the hanging corpses turned, revolving in their nooses until all the eyes of the Gallows were staring directly at them.

  There was a long and terrible silence.

  And then Bluma came crashing out through the corpses, eyes wide in fear and confusion.

  Yehuda Leib turned toward the outskirts of the Dead City and began to run, Bluma following close behind. They didn’t pause to look back until they were well past the first houses at the edge of the Dead City.

  But when they did, Yehuda Leib felt his heart fall.

  The final hanged man—the gold-toothed soldier in his bullet-pocked uniform—was nowhere to be seen.

  * * *

  —

  “I told you,” said Mammon, his voice drawn and angry, “to be silent.”

  “I know,” said Yehuda Leib.

  “And of all the things to yell out…”

  “Yes,” said Yehuda Leib. “I know.”

  “I might have to reevaluate our agreement.”

  Now Yehuda Leib came screeching to a halt in the middle of the snowy street, fixing Mammon with a cutting glare. “Don’t,” he said, “threaten me.”

  “How can I possibly enter into partnership with someone who refuses to obey me?” said Mammon.

  “Because,” said Yehuda Leib, “that’s what partnership is. And you said in Zubinsk that just bringing us into the Far Country implicates you in whatever we do here, so there’s no benefit to be had in breaking off our partnership now. You’re just trying to intimidate me.” />
  “I simply cannot believe,” said Mammon, “that you would make such a stupid, careless mistake.”

  “It wasn’t a mistake.”

  At this, both Yehuda Leib and Mammon fell silent.

  It was the first thing Bluma had said since emerging from the Gallows.

  “It wasn’t a mistake,” she said again. “I had turned back. I’d lost my way. If I hadn’t heard Yehuda Leib calling my name…”

  Mammon let out a heavy sigh. “You are extraordinarily lucky, girl.”

  Bluma’s shapeless lips were pressed together, white with pressure. “Thank you,” she said to Yehuda Leib.

  “We have to move,” said Mammon. “If word gets out that you’ve come here…”

  Yehuda Leib turned the little pram up the street and began to push again.

  Only now was he able to look at the corpse of the city all around him.

  The hulking shapes of burned-out houses on the outskirts of the Dead City had given quick way to larger buildings—tenements, apartment blocks. Everywhere, doors stood hanging open. Many of the neatly rowed windows above were shattered, their glassy eyes turned into jagged, toothy mouths. Overhead, the slack laundry lines were hung with clothes that had long since gone to abject tatters in the wind, and snow and refuse blew through street and room indiscriminately.

  No one was here.

  No people, no horses—not even a rat.

  No one.

  As they moved into the richer and more fashionable portions of the city, their surroundings began to change. Intricate carven masonry adorned the houses, but even it had not been spared its death: the stonework vines and flowers had withered, wilted; soot stained the marble black. Through the broken bay windows, once-fine sitting rooms could be seen to molder, sofas and settees disemboweled of their stuffing, oil paintings worn away to filmy nothingness.

  Before long, they found themselves required to weave carefully back and forth in order to navigate the crowds of fallen carriages, hansoms, and carts that littered the street.

  Here was an overgrown park, its untended grasses sticking up through the thick layer of snow like stubble through the pale face of a dead man; there was a cavernous market, its unattended stalls piled high with frosty, rotten produce.

  The wind was cold, and its long, frigid fingers tore at Yehuda Leib’s collar as if desperate to get in.

  Soon they came to a wide, frozen river that cut through the Dead City like a scar, and this they crossed along a grand bridge that had tumbled down to the waterline. Ships had lain at anchor when the river froze through, and Bluma couldn’t help but think that the masts, fixed at an unnatural cant, looked like fingers reaching up through the ice. They were halfway up the winding switchbacks of the high hill at the center of the city when Bluma looked behind—just to see the masts once more, just to convince herself that they were still inert and wooden—and she nearly jumped out of her skin.

  Something had skittered across the road behind them.

  “It’s all right,” said Mammon softly. “It’s only a goblin.”

  “Only a goblin?” whispered Bluma.

  Mammon smiled cruelly. “I can think of many things you would less prefer to stalk you through the Dead City than a little goblin, girl.”

  This was not reassuring.

  “Perhaps we ought to move a bit faster,” said Bluma, her hand straying to the cold metal in her apron pocket—just for the comfort of knowing it was there.

  The structure at the top of the hill seemed by far the oldest portion of the Dead City. There were no houses here, no shops or apartments—only ruins of old, tawny stone.

  With difficulty, Yehuda Leib managed to rumble the pram up the huge, crumbling stairs that led into the courtyard, eerie and silent beneath its wide blanket of snow.

  “Yes,” said Mammon, “nearly there.” And with a knobbly finger, he pointed at a monumental heap of rubble at the center of the courtyard.

  “Inside,” he said.

  “Are you sure?” said Yehuda Leib, breathing hard. There didn’t seem to be much room to maneuver.

  “Positive,” said Mammon. “In!”

  It should’ve been dark as the grave within the fallen structure, but somehow—and for the first time anywhere in the Dead City—warm, jumping candlelight seemed to illuminate the rocky chamber. But there was no candle here, no lantern, no hearth. All there was within the little sanctum was an empty doorway—battered posts and a lintel—that framed Nothing at All.

  Only the rocky wall was visible behind it.

  “What is this?” said Yehuda Leib.

  “This,” said Mammon, “is the way in.”

  “What are you talking about?” said Yehuda Leib. “There’s nothing here!”

  He was beginning to fear that this whole misadventure had been a malicious distraction, a wild-goose chase—or, worse, a method of entrapping them with no defenses.

  “Tsk, tsk, tsk,” said Mammon. “Whatever happened to those keen eyes of yours?”

  Yehuda Leib shook his head. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Would you like a hint?” said Mammon.

  Yehuda Leib looked as if he might strangle Mammon, but a cooler head prevailed:

  “Please,” said Bluma.

  “Around the back,” said Mammon.

  With difficulty, Yehuda Leib piloted the pram over the rough, uneven ground to the other side of the doorway.

  And all of a sudden, everything became clear.

  “Splendid,” said Mammon.

  From this side, the door could be seen to lead into a wide, warm study hall, in which old dead men bent to the careful scrutiny of thick books by candlelight—candlelight that spilled out into the rocky sanctum through the back of the doorway.

  “What is it?” said Bluma.

  “This,” said Mammon, “is the Yeshiva of Dantalion.”

  And, having hopped lightly down from his pram, he led the way through the door.

  Yehuda Leib had never visited a proper yeshiva before, but he had seen the men of Tupik learning in the little study house back home many times.

  Immediately he knew that something was wrong.

  “Why is it so quiet?” he said.

  Bluma stopped to listen. It was true—far and away the loudest sounds were the creaking of the long wooden benches, the turning of pages. There were masses and masses of men here, elders and whitebeards crowded shoulder to shoulder—but none of them ever looked up to pose a question to his neighbor, to verify an interpretation, even to start an argument.

  “Look,” said Bluma. “They study alone.”

  “How else could it be?” said Mammon.

  “Where we come from,” said Bluma, “men study together—in partnerships.”

  Mammon gave a little chuckle. “Not here.”

  “Why not?” said Yehuda Leib.

  “The only reason a dead man comes to study the Dantalion,” said Mammon, “is because he is searching for secrets. And one does not master secrets by telling them.”

  “But how can they be sure,” said Bluma, “that they correctly understand what they read?”

  “They can’t,” said Mammon with a smile. “Isn’t it splendid?”

  It did not seem splendid to Bluma at all.

  It seemed very sad and very lonely.

  The chamber extended farther than the eye could see in either direction, crowded with readers at long wooden tables. Rising high up into obscurity on every wall were cases and cases crammed with ancient books: parchment and paper and vellum and bark—even clay and stone. Unbound manuscripts, brittle scrolls, jotted scraps filled every inch of empty space. Some books were missing their covers, and some of their spines had broken.

  Bluma swallowed hard, trying to imagine how long it would take to lay your hand on a specific book here. A h
undred years? Two hundred?

  “But how can anyone possibly find the secret they’re looking for in all this mess?” said Bluma.

  “Oh,” said Mammon. “There are no secrets here. In this room, only the supracommentaries are kept—the books about the books about the rumors of what Dantalion has said.”

  One of the readers nearby was muttering, moving his lips as he read, and Yehuda Leib slowed his pace to overhear.

  “ ‘It is written in Raz Sodekhah,’ ” read the old man, “ ‘that Lord Dantalion is none other than the serpent who tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, but this is commonly held to be poetic metaphor. The Daas HaGanuz, however, brings a rumor that there was a discrepancy in punctuation between the original Ten Commandments destroyed by Moses at the foot of Mount Sinai and the replacements issued by the Holy One, Blessed Be He. The Daas HaGanuz contends that it is this discrepancy, known only by Moses, that is the beginning of the Dantalion….’ ”

  Yehuda Leib turned back to find Mammon grinning ear to ear. “One could study here forever,” he said, “and still not come any closer to the secret one seeks.”

  “But there must be a way forward,” said Yehuda Leib.

  “Oh,” said Mammon, turning them toward a narrow gap between two bookcases. “There is. If one is wise enough to discern the shape of truth beneath the outer layers of rumor and misunderstanding…”

  A spindly, steep staircase plunged down into the darkness between the bookcases, one single point of jumping candlelight dancing at its bottom.

  “But one may only move forward,” said Mammon, clambering downward into the darkness, “if one passes the examination.”

  * * *

  —

  The man who sat squinting at his reading beside the candle at the bottom of the stairs was impossibly old. He had fewer teeth remaining than he had eyes, and his beard seemed to be at least half cobwebbing.

  “You wish to pass into the second chamber?” he said in a rasping voice.

  “Yes,” said Yehuda Leib.

  “Very well,” said the man, sitting up officiously. “Tell me a secret.”

  Yehuda Leib’s heart began to thunder.