The Origin of Sorrow

by Robert Mayer

  The portly judge, cloaked in black, entered. The accused thief was called to the witness box, which was enclosed on three sides by wooden rails. He was a hearty looking fellow, about thirty years old, tanned, beardless except for the stubble of a day or two. The judge looked down from his raised bench, took in the rugged coloring of the defendant, and seemed uncertain. “Your name is Rafe Isaacs. You are a Jew?”

  The accused said that he was.

  The judge turned to a bailiff. “Bring in the skin.”

  Leaving through a rear door, the bailiff returned a moment later dragging the heavy, hairy skin of a large pig. The head and the tail were still attached. The men in the front seats murmured to one another and stretched their necks to see. The bailiff moved the suspect aside and placed the pig skin on the floor of the witness box. “Stand on that,” he ordered.

  The accused hesitated for a moment, looked around the courtroom as if in protest. Then he did as he’d been told.

  “You are accused of being a highwayman,” the judge intoned. “You are charged with robbing a Gentile merchant, who was driving alone in a carriage, of the sum of five gulden, by threatening to crack his head with an iron bar. How do you say, guilty or not guilty?”

  “Not guilty.”

  “Very well. Before you are questioned you must take the Jews’ oath. Place your right hand upon the Books of Moses in front of you, and repeat after me.”

  The judge moved a piece of paper on his lectern. As the accused repeated the judge’s words, his tremulous voice seemed to clash with his powerful physique.

  “Regarding such property of which the man accuses me, I know nothing of it, nor do I have it. I never had it in my possession, nor do I have it in any of my chests, I have not buried it in the earth, nor locked it with locks, so help me God who created heaven and earth, valley and hill, woods, trees, and grass. And so help me the Five Books of Moses, that if I dissemble I may nevermore enjoy a bite without soiling myself all over as did the King of Babylon.

  “And may that sulphur and pitch flow down upon my neck that flowed over Sodom and Gomorra, and the same pitch that flowed over Babylon flow over me, but two hundred times more, and may the earth envelop and swallow me up.

  “And may my dust never join other dust, and my earth never join other earth in the bosom of Master Abraham, if what I say is not true and right.

  “If not, may a bleeding and a flowing come forth from me and never cease, as my people wished upon themselves when they condemned God, Jesus Christ, among themselves, and tortured Him and said, ‘His blood be upon us and our children.’

  “It is true, so help me God who appeared to Moses in a burning bush which yet remained unconsumed. It is true by the soul which I bring on the Day of Judgment before the court of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It is true, so help me God.”

  All the time that the suspect was saying these words, he winced with pain, as the bailiff drew back and forth between his bare legs a rose branch covered with thorns.

  “Very well, the accused Jew has sworn the oath,” the judge said. “The city attorney may call his first witness.”

  In the back row, Meyer Rothschild leaned close to Yussel Kahn. “I’ve had enough of this,” he whispered. Quietly he slipped from his seat and out into the corridor. Yussel followed. The rag dealer Ephraim Hess remained in his seat.

  On the Fahrgasse, the cries of vendors, the smells of the stables and the beer halls, the rumbling of huge wagons carrying barrels of goods from the docks, the loading of other wagons in front of warehouses, all went unnoticed by the two men. Neither spoke until they were back in the Judengasse. The deprivations with which they had grown up they could accept; the unexpected cut deep.

  They stopped outside the Pfann, where the alley led back to Meyer’s apartment in the Hinterpfann. “I knew there was a special oath for Jews,” Yussel said. “I never imagined anything like that.”

  They were ready to go their separate ways. But neither wanted to be alone. They perched on the warm cobbles, leaned their backs against the wall. They did not feel like working; Yussel did not trust the steadiness of his hands; Meyer, at the moment, had no interest in coins. The bustle of the lane swirled around them. Would things ever change? Thinking that way lay madness. Unless you had the power to make them change.

  “The oath was bad enough,” Meyer said. “And the pig. What was the need for ripping him with thorns?”

  “I imagine that’s their ironic joke. A crown of thorns upon his head. A branch of thorns between his legs.”

  “Highly comical.”

  Yussel wanted to alter the discussion, but hardly succeeded. “Are there many highwaymen on the roads?”

  “So they say. I’ve never encountered one. I didn’t know any were Jews.”

  Yussel closed his eyes, pressed his shoulder blades against the wall, recited a line of poetry — a line that resonated within his soul. “Desperation ignores no race, no faith, but gallops in on twin black steeds, swords flashing.”

  “Your beloved Shakespeare?” Meyer asked.

  “Our beloved Nahum Baum. 1614.”

  “Before or after the Fettmilch attack?”

  “During, if you believe the stories. Baum unable to go down and fight because of his withered leg. Watching from his window, writing poetry.”

  “The yeshiva teaches only Torah and Talmud. Where do you find your Shakespeare? Your Baum, for that matter?”

  “A bookbinder and bookseller near the university, where I buy special glue for my wood. Shakespeare he displays in the window. The Baum he hides under the floor.”

  “And they sell?”

  “I’m told ‘The Merchant of Venice’ does very well.”

  “A play about a merchant? That one you’ll have to lend me, when I have the time. Maybe I’ll learn something.”

  “That one you wouldn’t like. Of course, the scribblings of Luther outsell them all.”

  “The devil in monk’s clothing.” Meyer spat on the cobbles.

  Across the lane he saw Leo and Yetta Liebmann walking slowly toward their house near the gate. Leo was leaning on his wife’s arm, apparently recovered from fainting spells that had sent him to the hospital. Meyer waved to them. Neither waved back. He could not tell if they had not seen him, preoccupied as they were with each uneven step on the cobbles, or if they, too, were angry because he wasn’t taking their son Hersch to the Fair.

  “That fellow in the court,” Yussel said. “Do you think he’s guilty?”

  “His darkened, outdoor face could convict him.”

  “He could live in Mainz. In Mannheim. Anywhere there’s sun in the Jewish quarter.”

  They envisioned the accused again. A sturdy, rugged man. He’d looked as if he could wrestle down a bull.

  “One thing about highwaymen,” Meyer said. “Whether they exist or not — I assume they do — I aim to make money off them.”

  “How can you do that?”

  A woman emerged from the house next door to empty a chamber pot into the ditch. Both men turned away to diminish the smell. Etiquette said you shouldn’t turn your nose, because everyone had chamber pots to empty. It was one rule of manners rarely obeyed.

  “Merchants and Princes from all over will be coming to the Fair,” Meyer said. “They’ll want to buy jewelry, silks, antiques. But they don’t like to carry gold or silver with them. Or a great deal of money. The metals are heavy to haul around. And there’s a risk, because of these highwaymen. It could get stolen.”

  “How does that help you?”

  “I’ve written to many of the richest merchants and Princes, offering them letters of credit.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ve told these wealthy men they can come here without any gold or silver, without much money. So they don’t risk being robbed. For anything they want to buy at the Fair, I‘ll give them a letter of credit. They can use it just like gold. I will pay for their purchases. When they return home, they can send the money to me, safely. With interest, of co
urse. Which is where I make a profit.”

  “Where will you get the money to lend them?”

  “From the coins, the antiques. I’ve been saving cash exactly for this. There’s money to be made in buying and selling all kinds of goods. There’s more money to be made in banking. But there’s a fortune to be made in combining both. Commerce can give you a stream of gold. With banking, you can turn the stream into a river.“

  Meyer loved to talk about business. Yussel was a willing listener.

  “Look at the ships in the harbor,” Meyer said. “Importing is growing fast — and it can’t exist without loans, without credit. Importers have to pay for their goods first, and make their profits later. So they need to borrow money. Lending isn’t new, most of the rich men in the lane are bankers. That doesn’t make them brilliant . . .”

  Yussel interrupted. “Don’t tell that to them.”

  “I won’t, believe me. But they did make the most of a sort of mercantile Judengasse. Some Pope or other decided way back that charging interest is unclean. The church forbid Catholics from doing it. That left the field to the Jews.”

  “Usury,” Yussel said.

  “Which is a stupid notion, unless the charge is excessive. The interest is because your money is locked up in the loan. You can’t use it for anything else.”

  “It’s hard to love the person you owe money to.”

  “Exactly. That’s one reason the goyim hate us. But the idea of giving credit on a large scale isn’t appealing to most bankers. A pawnbroker will give you a small amount, against your pawned item. Lending a lot of money, with nothing to back it up, no collateral — that’s a gamble. Most Gentile bankers don’t want to take the risk. Especially with fancy-living Princes they don’t trust. Jews can’t afford to be so choosy.”

  “Where’d those Gentile bankers come from?”

  “Protestants don’t listen to the Pope.”

  Yussel smiled, lifted his hat momentarily and ran his hand through his prematurely thinning ginger hair. “These letters of credit — when others see them, won’t they offer the same thing?”

  “Some of the braver ones will. But I’ll charge lower interest.”

  “Then you’ll make less money.”

  “Not if I get most of the business. Also, the merchants and Princes I give credit to now, because I trust them, will come to me in the future, when they need bigger loans.”

  “You were born to do business, Meyer Amschel. How do you think of such things?”

  “I know one way. When I lie awake at night, I don’t spend my time undressing Guttle Schnapper.”

  “You don’t?”

  “Not until recently.”

  At once, Meyer feared he’d misspoken, that he might have wounded his friend. But Yussel just grinned. He evinced no jealousy. This was one of the advantages of the Judengasse. With people living almost inside each other’s shoes, the worst indulgences of the heart — envy, jealousy — had to be smothered quickly. Still, the mention of Guttle created a silence between them, until Yussel spoke. “I’m loathe to say this, but maybe you shouldn’t be so ambitious about making a fortune.”

  “Why not?”

  “There are thirty thousand people in Frankfurt. Ten times as many as there are Jews in the lane. Almost all of them are Lutherans. Including those in power.”

  “The rancid monk has been dead two hundred years.”

  “But not his diatribes. You want to know what’s behind what we saw in the courtroom? I can lend you one of his books.”

  “That pleasure I’ll skip. The way I look at it, they hate a Jew whether he’s poor or rich. So I might as well be rich.”

  “Rich, you never know what they might do to you.”

  “Rich, you never know what I might do to them.”

  Yussel wiped the sweat from his forehead, rubbed his hand on his breeches. “It’s impossible to talk to you.”

  “We’re talking, aren’t we? What’s impossible, maybe, is convincing me.”

  Yussel smiled the smile of the eternally resigned. He made coffins, after all. Meyer shifted his position on the cobbles, extended a leg in front of him. The spring mud of the lane had long since dried into fine dust, and coated the cobbles with its paleness. A small cloud rose at his feet, like gnats. As the dust settled back, they saw at the northern gate the thin figure of the rag dealer, returning from town. Perhaps, unconsciously, that’s who they had been waiting for.

  “Ephraim Hess!” Yussel called out. “Back so soon? Come tell us what happened at the trial.”

  The rag dealer was happy to be summoned by these gentlemen, to be a bearer of information they did not have. “It was quick. There was only one witness. The Gentile who was robbed. He swore it was him. Said this Rafe Isaacs robbed him of five gulden.

  “And the verdict?” Yussel asked.

  “Guilty, of course.”

  “Why ‘of course’?”

  “A Gentile’s word against a Jew’s.”

  “He may well be guilty, Jew or not,” Meyer said. “What did they fine him?”

  “No fine.”

  “No fine? Then the oath was worse than the sentence.”

  “They’re going to hang him.”

  Meyer and Yussel quit drawing breaths.

  “Hang him?” Yussel asked. “For stealing five gulden?”

  “He’s a Jew,” the rag dealer repeated.

  “A Jewish thief,” Meyer said. “Not a good marriage.”

  “The way the Gentiles see it, murder is only a crime against the person you kill. But robbery — that’s a threat to all who own property.”

  From across the lane the rag dealer’s young wife, Eva, came to greet her husband. She was holding the baby Solomon.

  “This … deed … of supreme justice,” Meyer said, selecting his words with care so as not to upset Eva. “Did they say when they will carry it out?”

  “During the Fair. In the Town Square. They want to set an example.”

  The baby gagged. Eva patted his back until he burped.

  Guttle had to press against the wall and slide sideways to get through the alley that led to the Hinterpfann, which had become the most colorful place in the lane, clogged with bolts of silk and cotton piled high on wooden pallets to keep them from touching the ground. Meyer’s two brothers, Kalman and Moish, were adding more bolts to the piles. In anticipation of good sales at the Fair, they had imported from England more textiles than the house could hold. The alley was covered by an overhang, but still they hoped the weather didn’t break into rain before they moved their stock. Dry goods didn’t sell well wet.

  Greeting the brothers, Guttle admired the fabrics, fingering the edges of a bright green silk, a beige silk, a burgundy. Any number she would have loved to shape into blouses, or have Dvorah’s mother turn into a stunning dress — not that she had occasion to wear a stunning dress. Leaving the silks, she entered the house and found more fabric piled high on the office table. Two carrying cases on the floor, she figured, must hold the coins she and Meyer would sell at the Fair.

  “Is that you, Guttle?” His voice came from up the stairs. “Come up to the kitchen. We’ll write the letter here.”

  She had never been up the steep stairs. Climbing slowly, lifting her beige cotton skirt so she would not step on it, she gripped the coarse rope that passed for a balustrade. Rope splinters pricked her palms; she knew that Meyer’s hands sometimes had sores from them. She found him seated at the kitchen table, on which he’d placed quills, ink, paper, like a meal for a scribe. He was reading a newspaper she did not recognize. Through an open door to the left she could see his narrow bedroom. The third and fourth floors, she knew, were occupied by Kalman, by Moish, his wife and three children, and by the Bauers. She’d heard from Meyer that the windows on the top floor were higher than the ghetto walls, and overlooked the city — but that they’d been boarded up, in accordance with Frankfurt law. Jews were not permitted to look out from their homes into the public gardens and the Christian streets.
Constables made unannounced visits to make sure the laws were obeyed.

  Hanging on the dingy yellow kitchen walls were blackened pots and pans. Dishes sat on a counter beside the woodstove. In a corner was a pile of newspapers higher than the table. Meyer folded the one he’d been reading and placed it on the pile.

  “You look very nice today,” he said, standing. She thanked him for the compliment. Knowing she was coming here, she had worn a white blouse with lace ruffles that circled her wrists and neck. It was her favorite blouse, one she usually reserved for the High Holy Days.

  “You read a lot of newspapers,” she said, looking at the pile. “Or maybe the problem is you don’t read them.”

  “Oh, I read them. From Vienna, Berlin, Kassel, pretty much everywhere. The problem is that when they get here they’re three weeks old. I need to get them sooner. For the latest exchange rates.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “All the money changers in the lane, do you know what they do?”

  “Not really.” She only knew that Viktor’s father was one.

  “You’ll see it at the Fair. We’ll be doing it as well. To buy anything in Frankfurt, you have to use Frankfurt money. Kreuzer, gulden. But every little town and principality mints it’s own money. When people come to Frankfurt, they have to change their money in order to shop. Ducats, carolins, thalers, louis d’ors. Everything. The money changers do that. They charge a fee, of course, that’s how they stay in business. But there’s another way they can make a profit. Let’s say they know what the exchange rate is for guldens in Hanau. If they give a traveler ten guldens for a certain amount of Hanau coins, and then go to Hanau and get eleven guldens back for the same coins, that’s a nice profit.”

  “Let’s write the letter,” Guttle said.

  “Yes, of course. I didn’t mean to bore you with business.” He pulled a chair out for her.