The Origin of Sorrow

by Robert Mayer

  “How much time,” Guttle asked, hands grasping the sides of the chair, legs swinging above the ground like an impatient child’s. From a chain on his waistcoat Meyer lifted his pocket watch. “Any time now. They must be waiting for some nobleman to open the Fair.”

  “I’m nervous,” Guttle said. “All this color, and music … it makes the lane seem … like a graveyard. Is that a terrible thing to say? And noblemen! What am I doing among noblemen who travel the world? Boiling beetles is what I do best.”

  “You’ll be fine,” Meyer said, squeezing her hand, threading an errant lock of hair back under her blue hat, lifting one of the ribbons from in front of her face.

  “And look how many Gentiles!”

  “They don’t bite,” Meyer said.

  “You’re making fun of me. I’m really scared.”

  “I know. The first time is always frightening. But I’m here with you.”

  The musicians broke off the march they were playing. The trumpeters stood and blasted a royal fanfare that resounded over the square and down all the intersecting streets. Cheers roared from the crowds behind the barricades. The cheers overwhelmed whatever the mayor of Frankfurt was saying on the platform. Nobody seemed to mind. When he was through he extended a welcoming hand to his right. Two Constables stepped onto the platform, and behind them a slightly pudgy man in the plumage of a male bird. His coat was bright red, his vest beige, his breeches yellow, his silk hose white to match his ruffled shirt, his shoes black with gold buckles. His wide hat was a bright yellow that matched his breeches; a red feather swept from it like a zephyr.

  “Well, look who’s there,” Meyer said.

  “Who is it?” Guttle stood on her toes to see.

  “The great man himself. Crown Prince Wilhelm.”

  “My correspondent!” She strained her neck further. “Did you know he would be here?”

  “Not to open the Fair. But he never misses a chance for bargains.”

  “Will he come see you?”

  “Not me, especially. I’m nobody. But he’s sure to tour Jews Row back here.”

  “I’m got up like a canary!”

  “Don’t worry, so is he.”

  The crown Prince was speaking. In the back row they could not hear his words. Most were drowned by cheers from merchants near the front. People were already beginning to perspire in the heat.

  “You look beautiful,” Meyer assured her. “Something the Prince has an eye for.”

  “How do you know that?.”

  “There are lots of stories. Also lots of children.”

  “He’s married, then.”

  “He’s married, yes, though the two facts don’t connect.”

  “How can you say you’re nobody? You may soon be a court agent. Do you think he’ll have an answer to your letter?”

  “He may not have received it yet. Even if he has, these things must be done in writing. The subject won’t come up.”

  Guttle said nothing.

  “Did you hear me, Guttle? The subject won’t come up.”

  “You needn’t worry, I know when to hold my tongue. If the crown Prince comes near here, I just might swallow it.”

  A loud cheer arose from the front, and the sound of a single long trumpet note that seemed to last beyond the breath of a man, the sound going on and on and drawing down upon the square the loudest roar yet from the people waiting behind the barricades. Hearing the long trumpet cry the Constables wrenched the barricades aside and the fairgoers poured into the square from five directions, swarmed among the stalls like grasshoppers in a field of barley. Guttle clutched tight to Meyer’s arm. Soon the first customers arrived.

  For half an hour they were too busy to talk, while the piles of kreuzer and gulden in one box dwindled and the other box filled up with every shape and denomination of foreign coin. Then business slowed as the visitors, armed with the proper currency, began to move among the displays. With Meyer’s permission, Guttle went to visit Dvorah at the hospital stall.

  “Has anyone fainted yet?” she asked.

  “Not yet. I’m scared. What if it’s a Gentile who faints? Lev and I didn’t discuss that. Am I supposed to help Gentiles?”

  “A true moral dilemma. Of course you are. Gentiles are people, too.”

  “I know. Still, I hope it’s only Jews who get sick.”

  “The Chief Rabbi would be proud of you.”

  “Oh, you know what I mean. I’d be so nervous, touching them.”

  “Gentiles don’t bite, silly.”

  Guttle looked up at the sky, more sky than you could see from anywhere else in Frankfurt, she imagined. Except perhaps the parks; that she didn’t know. Clouds were approaching from the west. “Things may start cooling off,” she said.

  “I hope so. Of course, then I wouldn’t be needed here.”

  Dvorah was rarely satisfied with anything in life. Guttle kissed her on the cheek and hurried back. When she found Meyer idle, she visited with Hannah Schlicter at the stall beside theirs. Dvorah’s mother was bubbling over with news — she’d already sold a dress to a countess, who wanted to come for fittings and order more. “She took my name. She said she’ll come to the Judengasse! A real countess! Can you imagine?”

  As the bright sunlight and music and color and noise swirled like an operetta through her head, Guttle felt she could imagine anything.

  The smell of wood smoke began to drift through the air like a refugee from a cooler place. Despite the heat the purveyors of sausages and sliced pork fried with onions had no course but to fire up the wood in their portable stoves. Smells of the not-kosher watered mouths in the back rows of stalls as well as those down front. Guttle wished she’d brought something tastier for them to eat than leftover chicken and challah. She’d thought of dried herring, but that would only make them more thirsty.

  Her thoughts of food were banished by a jester dressed in lime and lemon stripes and a floppy hat, his face shiny with greasepaint, who was moving along the back row making mischief. Pausing at the stall beside theirs, he picked up one of Yussel Kahn’s miniature carved chairs and tried to sit on it. He shook his head, it was much too small. The people who had gathered around laughed. He lifted a dress of Frau Schlicter’s from the stall and held it at arm’s length in front of him and began to dance with it. The small crowd applauded the lovely couple.

  The jester put the dress back and approached Meyer’s booth, and pulled three red balls from his pocket and began to juggle with them. He put one ball away, and with exaggerated theatrical motions lifted up one of the antique heads. It was the classic Greek, the most expensive of the three. Worth two hundred gulden, Meyer had said. The jester began to toss and catch the two balls in his other hand. He appeared to be preparing to juggle the balls and the Greek head. Guttle held her breath. She saw that Meyer was doing the same. The onlookers encouraged the jester. She saw Hannah and Yussel squirming, as if debating whether to step in. After feigning three times to throw the head in the air, the jester set it back on the shelf. It all had been a tease.

  They breathed again as he moved on to the rag dealer’s stall and began to play with the baby, tickling him with goose feathers, puzzling the infant by making strange faces. Ephraim Hess gave the jester a coin and he moved on to the next stall, and the next. Angry over his threat with the antique head, Guttle still was watching him when he left the line of stalls, crossed the cobbled street, spoke with a Constable. She tugged the sleeve of Meyer’s coat as he concluded a deal with a young nobleman for a medal bearing the likeness of Julius Caesar; for many collectors, such medals were as valuable as coins.

  “What is it?”

  She leaned toward him so as not to be overheard. “Beware the jesters,” she whispered.

  She inclined her head toward the rag dealer’s stall, which the Constable was approaching.

  A moment later there was commotion on both sides. Ephraim Hess was exchanging loud words with the Constable, who apparently was insisting that the infant needed a pass to rema
in at the Fair. Meyer began to fear that the young man might get himself arrested. Once he was in jail, anything could happen. At the same time, in the other direction, fairgoers were crowding in and moving back like waves splashing on rocks as a small entourage swept grandly among the stalls. The wave broke again, and thrust in front of Meyer’s stall was Crown Prince Wilhelm himself, in all his bemedalled plumage, along with four aides wearing black waistcoats and gray breeches: crows surrounding a peacock. While Meyer cast a concerned eye at the rag dealer and the Constable, the Prince lifted and inspected in order the Greek head, the Roman, the Etruscan.

  “Do I know you, Herr Jew?” he asked.

  Meyer bowed briefly from the waist. “I’ve sold you a number of coins, Your Serenity. Meyer Amschel Rothschild at your service.”

  “These are proper sculptings. I might be interested.”

  Meyer glanced away from the Prince and saw the Constable pulling Ephraim Hess by the sleeve of his coat while his wife Eva screamed and the baby Solomon cried. Meyer was torn, did not know what to do. He had to decide quickly.

  “Your Royal Essence, if you will excuse me just a moment … a friend … I’ll return in a moment. Guttle, entertain the Prince.”

  He pushed past her and left the stall.

  Entertain the Prince? How could he do this to me?

  She forced herself to smile, though beneath her dress her knees were shaking. She prayed that the Prince couldn’t tell. Droplets of sweat ran down the hollow of her back.

  “Leave the Prince unattended?” one of the crows exclaimed. “How dare the Jew! Make sure you get his name,” he said to another crow. “He’ll pay for this.”

  “Calm, calm, Hans, we are not unattended. And your name, lovely lady, is?”

  “Guttle.” She was barely able to speak, was blushing in front of royalty, astonished as much as the crows that Meyer had deserted him. Surprised also that the Prince appeared to be only about Meyer’s age.

  “Guttle … what was the fellow’s name … Rothschild, may I ask?”

  “Guttle Schnapper.”

  “Then the Jew is a fool.”

  “I mean, not yet. That is we’re, well we, I was to say we’re betrothed, but that is not true either. Yet, I mean.”

  “Easy, child. I see the picture. Perhaps he is not a fool.”

  “Of course he’s a fool,” Hans said to another crow. “Imagine, leaving the Prince like that. It’s unheard of.”

  The Prince, looking at Guttle, smiled a small smile. “Now it’s been heard of,” he said. “Write down his name for me.”

  Guttle took up quill and paper. “He didn’t mean anything, Your Lofty Serenity,” she blurted. “He wants so much to be a court agent, he would never offend such as you. If he is granted the title, we can become betrothed.” She wrote down Meyer’s name. “But now he’ll hate me, I wasn’t supposed to speak of that.”

  The Prince looked beyond the stall, to where Meyer was speaking with the Constable. “I assure you, Fräulein, I heard not a word your lovely lips uttered. Hans! Paper and pen!”

  Hans produced an embossed sheet of paper from the sack he carried, and a quill that he dipped in a jar of ink. At the rag dealer’s stall the screaming had stopped; the dealer was hugging his wife, who held the baby at her side. Behind them Meyer was walking away a few steps, still speaking with the Constable.

  “The effrontery,” Hans said.

  The Prince finished scrawling a note on the paper, which bore his coat of arms, and signed it with a flourish. He returned the writing tools to Hans, held the paper aloft so Hans could blow on it, waved it in the air so it would dry more quickly. He snapped his fingers and Hans produced an envelope, into which the Prince folded his note. Handing the envelope to Guttle, he said, “I hope we shall meet again, young lady.”

  Guttle thought: We shan’t, unless you come to the Judengasse. She dared not say it. Uncertain what was expected of her, she curtsied, imitating etchings from her French history book. Wilhelm nodded, eyeing the shadowed valley of her bosom as she bowed, and without further word sauntered off, trailed by his pecking order.

  Thirty metres away, his back to the stalls, the Constable pocketed a letter of credit for three gulden. “Buy something nice for your wife, your mistress,” Meyer told him. “Should the question be asked, you can honestly swear you didn’t accept cash.”

  Turning to hurry back, Meyer saw the Prince leaving. He wanted to run after him, to apologize, to explain. But that would be unseemly. Slowly he walked to the stall. The sea of people had closed, the crown Prince had vanished into the waves.

  “What rotten timing!” Meyer muttered. “Yahweh is playing tricks.”

  “It wasn’t Yahweh, it was you! How could you insult the Prince like that? More important, how could you leave me alone with him? I was terrified.”

  “I’m sorry, Guttle. Two reasons. I like that Hess fellow, he’s got spunk. I didn’t want to see him carted off. He’s got a wife, a child.”

  She was not mollified. “And the second reason?”

  “I didn’t want you to think less of me.”

  “Me think less of you? I thought business always comes first.”

  “It does. Except when it comes second.”

  “So you tossed away your hopes.”

  “Was he that angry?” Meyer sat in the chair, disconsolate. He dropped his head toward his knees, but quickly raised it so as not to upset her. “There are other Princes out there. None as important as Wilhelm, none will ever be as rich. Still, latching onto a Prince here, a Prince there, I could do well enough.”

  They were interrupted by the approach of the rag dealer, carrying the baby. “I want to thank you, Herr Rothschild. For my wife, and my son. I don’t know what you did — I can guess — but I wouldn’t know how to do that. I am in your debt.”

  “Only people I do business with are in my debt. This was nothing. A gesture for a fellow Jew.”

  “My wife says I should offer you a coat. It would be secondhand, of course. But clean. I told her you are a gentleman, you have no need for a used coat.”

  “Thank your wife. Fortunes do change. I will accept your offer — in abeyance. Against the time I might need such a coat. So. Any debt you feel has been discharged.”

  “I do have a question. Might the Constable return tomorrow?”

  “Not him or any others. Your baby is safe for the week — if he’s a man of his word. I believe he is.”

  “A Constable?”

  “Let’s say I took a gamble. All life is a gamble. The trick is to get the odds in your favor.”

  “I hope you’re right, sir.”

  He thanked Meyer again and went back to his wife at their stall, where customers were examining secondhand dresses and cloaks. The band on the center platform, which had been resting, erupted into another marching tune. Clouds covered the sun, creating an unearthly change of light, so rare in the Judengasse. A breeze came up, rippling the linen tops of the stalls.

  “Perhaps I could write a letter to the crown Prince,” Meyer said. “Explain the circumstances.”

  “I think he was aware of the circumstances,” Guttle replied. “He left a note.” She held it out to him.

  “Have you read it?”

  “No. It’s for you.”

  “I don’t have the stomach.” The enormity of what he had done was closing in on him like the Judengasse walls. All his long-range plans — gone for a secondhand coat. “Read it to me, bitte.”

  She opened the envelope and held the paper in front of her. It fluttered in the breeze, she had to grasp it with both hands; they were trembling. “It says: ‘We admire loyalty. Bring heads, best coins to Royal Hotel. Five by the clock. Wilhelm of Hesse-Hanau.’”

  She handed him the note, knees shaky again. He read it through several times, his lips moving as he did, as if to give the words a third dimension. Around them the tumult of the Fair was as loud as rolling thunder. They heard none of it.

  Meyer smiled ruefully. “It was you I wan
ted to please by making the moral choice. Instead, I impressed the Prince.”

  “A good lesson for life. Don’t you think?”

  “If I do what’s right, I please the world?”

  “No. If you please me, you please the world.”

  He glanced up at her, stood, put his hands on her shoulders. They looked into each other’s eyes. She felt calmer now, as if a lightning storm had passed.

  “We both know you didn’t do it for me,” she said, softly. “You did it because you couldn’t not do it.”

  He reached his hands to his head, straightened his three-cornered hat. “You think you know me that well already?”

  Guttle looked down, her fingers toyed with his sleeve. “It’s my mission in life.”

  “A smart girl like you needs to aim higher.” He tweaked her nose, gently.

  “Perhaps Yahweh gave me the mission.”

  “Then He needs to aim higher.”

  She put her arms around him, snuggled her head against his chest. “I hear His aim is usually good,” she said.

  He held her quietly, contentedly, amid the swollen river of sound around them.

  A man in the finery of a nobleman cleared his throat. Guttle left the stall to Meyer and basked in the warm sun, letting herself absorb again the colors, the aromatic air, the music, the chatter of human birdsong. She thought: how could the people who created all this also have created the Judengasse?

  Dvorah kept glancing over her shoulder expectantly. It was mid-afternoon before Doctor Berkov arrived at the Fair. She saw him nodding to everyone he knew as he passed. When at last he arrived at the her stall she was busy handing out cups of water to a line of thirsty people, Jew and Gentile both. Perspiration had pasted her auburn curls to her temples. The Doctor lifted a kettle and began to help.

  “You look tired,” she said, as she put an empty kettle on the ground and reached for another.