by Robert Mayer
“It’s him!” Schnapper said as the cart rattled by, slower this time than last. He ran out into its wake, shouting. “That man is no highwayman! That man is the blacksmith from Mainz!”
Red-faced, he turned to Meyer and Guttle, who had joined him in the street. He spoke rapidly. “Two weeks ago, a horse on the Speyer coach threw a shoe — we were near Mainz, so the driver stopped to get it replaced. The smithy was a Jew, I talked with him as he worked. That’s him, I’m sure of it! He’s got a wife and children. He’s no highwayman!”
The cart was turning the corner to more cheers. Schnapper ran to the first Constable he saw. It was the same officer from whom Meyer had rescued the rag dealer. “You have to stop the hanging!” Schnapper shouted. “I know that man, he’s innocent.”
“What did you say?”
“The man is innocent!”
As he leaned closer to make himself heard over the cheers a second Constable lifted his club and swung it hard into the back of Schnapper’s neck. The Court Jew fell to his knees, then toppled sideways onto the cobbles. “Keep your Jew notions to yourself,” the Constable warned, and turned away in disgust.
Guttle and Meyer ran to her father. He was struggling to his feet.
“Papa, Papa, are you all right?” Tears were watering her eyes.
“Don’t worry for me. We’ve got to stop the hanging.”
Ephraim Hess had come up to them and was listening. “It’s a blacksmith from Mainz,” Guttle told him. “He’s no highwayman, Papa says.”
“Rafe Isaacs?”
“That was the smithy’s name. Rafe.”
Ephraim ran to his wife and spoke with her. He began to move among the Jewish merchants, speaking rapidly. Eva, holding her baby, moved quickly in the other direction, doing the same. By the time the cart came around for the third time, moving even slower so the people could get a long look at the condemned, every Jewish merchant knew what Wolf Schnapper had said. “Stop the hanging!” they began to shout at the cart. And, “Free the innocent!” And, “Let the blacksmith go!” After the cart passed they stampeded down the aisles to the lip of the bandstand and shouted over and over: “Innocent! Innocent.”
Some of the Gentile merchants began to drown them out with shouts of their own: “Hang the thief! Hang the thieving Jew! Guilty! Guilty!”
The horses came to a stop behind the platform. A drum roll rumbled through the square. It shuddered from the cobbles into the chests of every onlooker. The guards wrestled Rafe Isaacs onto a platform beneath the gallows, into the iron cage. Jewish merchants tried to climb onto the bandstand, young and old, in black suits and full beards, but a phalanx of Constables had formed in front of it and were driving the Jews back with swinging clubs, or pulling them down by legs or arms. Some tried to climb again. Others hit the cobbles and lay still.
Guttle and Meyer had helped her injured father to the chair at their stall. As he caught his breath, Guttle looked at Meyer, who had made no attempt to move toward the platform. She turned away, disappointed. Why wasn’t he down there with the others?
Meyer put his arm around her, forgetting her father was there, or not caring. He seemed to know her thoughts. “It won’t do any good,” he said. “You fight the battles you can win. With weapons of your choice, not the enemy’s.”
She saw that Yussel Kahn also was holding back, was standing quietly next to Hannah, watching from afar.
The knot of the scratchy rope pressed into the back of his neck at the base of his skull. The front had caught on his Adam’s apple. He tried to adjust his head slightly, to let the rope slip upward under his chin, but it didn’t move. He thought: what is an Adam’s apple? Of what is it made? What function does it serve in the process of life? Why do men have them and women not? What connection does this pebble in the throat have to the Garden of Eden?
What would he feel when his Adam’s apple was crushed by the rope?
He stretched his neck. Still the rope did not move. He would not squirm more than that; it would not look proper.
Shouts from the crowd swept over him like a freezing wind, and he felt a chill. He could see old Jews being beaten by young Constables, and Christians cheering. But not all the Christians were cheering — he didn’t think it was all of them. Perhaps there was comfort in that. Conflicting shouts fell around his head like sparks from his anvil. The executioner, his face covered with a black hood, except for slits for his blue eyes, spoke to him, said it was time for his last words.
He would say no last words. They had made certain of that. As surely as if they had cut out his tongue.
The executioner asked his forgiveness. He nodded. As if he had the power to forgive. As if he, Rafe Isaacs, with a rope around his neck, were God.
Brendel would be alone with the boys. He wondered if there was a heaven, if one day he would meet them there.
He did not think so.
He did not think Brendel would be alone for long.
He heard one of the Jews ask another, “Why doesn’t he say who he is — the blacksmith from Mainz?”
He heard another, a thin fellow, reply, “Because they threatened to kill his wife. His children.”
He wondered how the fellow knew such things.
It was a talent, such knowledge. Like shaping hot metal into shoes for horses. Or swords for Princes.
The door of the cage into which he had been put clanged shut behind him. The executioner had only to pull a lever, and the floor upon which he was standing would fall away. He would gag, choke, his Adam’s apple would be crushed, he would kick his legs as he struggled in vain to breathe. He would soil himself, front and back. That is what happens, he knew.
Through the corner of his right eye he saw the executioner’s arm move forward, saw his fingers wrap around the wooden lever. He saw the arm jolt backward.
Most of the Jews turned away before the platform in the cage dropped. Some could not keep from watching the deed done, to see what the Gentiles were seeing, before turning away. They straggled up the aisles to their stalls, bruised from the clubs of the Constables. Two supported their right arms with their left, bones broken. None had the stomach to do more business. In a long thin line they began to wend their way back to the Judengasse, like a defeated army.
They could leave their goods behind, the stalls were protected at night. This was necessary for merchants who came from other cities, and for the reputation of the Fair itself. It was held under the personal auspices of the Empress. Woe be to those who embarrassed her.
None of the merchants was in a hurry to face his wife, his children, to explain why he had returned early, to describe what he had seen. The two with broken arms went to the hospital, where Doctor Berkov set a splint on one and the new Doctor Kirsch took care of the other. Most drifted from habit to the center of the lane, to the synagogue, where they stood outside and talked among themselves. Guttle urged her father to go to the hospital, to have Doctor Berkov look at his neck, where he’d been struck. That could wait, he said; he was the one who’d identified the blacksmith; he wanted to hear what people were saying. Seeing the crowd outside the schul, others who had not been at the Fair left their homes to see what was happening.
Ephraim Hess vaulted onto the synagogue steps and waved his arms for quiet. People wondered who this rag dealer thought he was, to be taking charge like that. When the gossip had cooled to a murmur, Ephraim began to orate. They all knew what had happened today, he said. An innocent Jew had been hanged at the Fair. They as Jews could not ignore this. Business could not go on as usual. They must stick together. He urged them all to withdraw from the Fair; to get their merchandise back in the morning, and not return. The government and the Polizei must be shown that they could not do such things to Jews.
Shouts of agreement came from some in the gathering. “No more Fair!” they began to yell. “No more Fair!”
“Then do we all agree?” Ephraim asked the crowd.
Amid a mixed response, Wolf Schnapper slowly mounted the steps, rub
bing his neck. He stood beside the rag dealer and asked for silence.
“I think most of you know who I am,” he said. “Wolf Schnapper, currently Chairman of the Judengasse Council. Before we do anything precipitous, I think we should hear from other speakers.” He looked about. “I see there in the rear another member of the council, Meyer Rothschild. Come up here, Meyer Amschel, and give us your thoughts.”
On the edge of the throng, Meyer turned to Guttle. “Your father has a wicked streak.”
He could hardly refuse to respond. They were waiting for him. He circled the crowd and climbed the steps and looked from face to face while focusing his thoughts.
“Except for reading from the Torah in schul,” he began, “I have never spoken to a gathering such as this. I am a private person.”
There was total stillness as they listened.
“I applaud the anger of my friend Ephraim Hess —” he turned to the rag dealer — “if I may call you my friend.” Hess smiled, nodded. “I, too, am furious at what we witnessed today. I think we all share a natural urge to respond to this unnatural killing — perhaps even to hurt someone. I know I do.”
“Revenge!” someone in the crowd yelled.
“But whom do we want to hurt?” Meyer continued. “Surely not ourselves. It has been my experience at the Fair that the most business is done the last few days. People have walked about with money in their pockets, looking at all the things they can buy. Now, in the next three days, they will do the spending. And on Friday they will want to change what money they have left back to their own currency. The money changers — I am one of them — will make profits.”
“No, no, no!” someone cried out. “A man is dead!”
“This is not about business!” another yelled.
“There is a principle here,” a third shouted.
Meyer held up his hand for silence. “Hear me out,” he pleaded. “I haven’t yet gotten to my point.”
“Well, get to it, or close your mouth,” a stout heckler yelled.
“The question,” he intoned as they quieted, “is not whether to respond, but how to respond. My point about business was not that we would lose money — but that the Gentiles will know this. They will see our stalls empty, and they will laugh. Do you know why they will laugh? Because they will think we are afraid! They will think that the sight of a man dangling from a rope has frightened us away. They will think that a few blows from the clubs of their Constables have sent us packing up our goods and going home. Is that what we want them to think?”
There were murmurs in the crowd. He went on.
“For more than three hundred years we have been locked in this Judengasse. Have we survived because we are afraid? Of course not! We have survived because we are strong. In the year 1614, when the Fettmilch gang rampaged through the lane, looting shops and beating our people, did our forebears turn and run? They did not. They picked up cudgels and brooms and lit into the intruders and beat them back. Many a Gentile thug went home that day with a bleeding head or a broken bone. No thugs have attacked the lane since.”
“That’s right,” someone yelled.
“That’s because they hanged the ringleaders,” someone else shouted.
“The man knows his history,” Meyer said. “The emperor hanged Fettmilch and the other mob leaders. But would he have done that if our brave ancestors had cringed in fear, instead of fighting those thugs, and demanding justice afterward? I think not.
“Now we are on trial again, and once again we need to demonstrate our strength. We need to return to the Fair tomorrow as if nothing has happened. We must carry on business as usual, sick as we feel inside. That is the way to show them they cannot intimidate us.”
“Rothschild makes sense,” Jacob Marcus said.
Murmurs of agreement seemed to spread.
Meyer continued. “I hope, as you do, that these walls that surround us will come down in our lifetime. Not in our children’s lifetime, or our children’s children’s, but in ours!” Cheers erupted among some of the spectators. He held up his hand. “But to see that happen, we cannot appear to be defeated. We cannot slink away like a beaten cur. We cannot abandon the field of battle. And if the field of battle happens to involve profits, as it does at the Fair, all the more reason not to run away. What kind of triumph is that?”
“He’s right,” came a cry from the crowd.
“Hot as it is,” someone said, “winter will come. We’ll need to feed our children when business slows.”
Murmurs of agreement were everywhere now.
“We have survived worse,” Meyer shouted, his voice growing hoarse. “There is no shame in surviving. There is no shame in being patient. But fleeing — that we must never do.”
A roar of approval greeted these final words. Meyer felt euphoric as he turned away from them. Wolf Schnapper put a hand on his shoulder and said into his ear above the noise, “You will be very rich one day.”
Meyer stepped back as if he’d been slapped. He glared for a moment, then turned away without responding and hurried down the steps. Behind him the rag dealer was asking for quiet.
“Rothschild is right!” someone else yelled.
Ephraim Hess help up his hands. “I agree with you. Herr Rothschild is right! I tend to be hot-headed sometimes. I want direct action. But going back to the Fair and facing them — that’s direct action as well. Perhaps more courageous than what I suggested. I withdraw what I said before. Let’s go back and take their money. Let’s show we are not afraid.”
The assent was unanimous. The men in the crowd felt better, their anger and frustration vented. They were ready to go home. They moved off in knots, to the south and to the north, eager to return to the Fair in the morning. Guttle hurried to Meyer. “You were wonderful,” she said. “What did my father whisper to you?”
“Your father is a fool sometimes.”
He saw the questioning hurt on her face. He took her hand. Together they walked toward the Owl and the Hinterpfann. Guttle did not understand.
They’d gone only a few steps when the Chief Rabbi called to Meyer from the doorway to his study. They crossed the sewage ditch to see what he wanted. Their hands were perspiring. They let them drop.
“I enjoyed how you threw cold water on that young hothead,” the Rabbi said.
“Is that what I did, Rabbi? Ephraim Hess is a good man.”
“Perhaps. But that’s not why I called you over. I know this is not an appropriate time, the hanging must have been terrible to see; we’ll say yizkor for the man in schul. Nonetheless, life must go on. Before this happened, my Gilda bought half a cow from the butcher. She’s preparing a welcoming supper this evening for the new Doctor. Berkov will be there, and Rabbi Simcha. I thought perhaps you’d like to join us. Hear the latest folderol from the universities.”
“I’d be honored, Rabbi.”
Without thinking, Meyer looked at Guttle. Guttle blushed and peered at the ground. The Rabbi glanced from one to the other. “You may come, too, young lady. Right after evening service.”
Rabbi Eleazar returned to his study. They resumed strolling in the dying heat of the lane.
“I feel awkward,” Guttle said. “Does he really want me to come?”
“He likes you. He’s the Chief Rabbi, he doesn’t have to do things just to be polite.”
They heard a thumping on the cobbles and saw Isidor Kracauer come running, cheeks puffing, blond hair akimbo. Guttle recalled her promise; she had not yet brought him a flower.
“Did you hear what they did to the blacksmith?” Izzy asked, breathless.
“We saw what they did to him,” Meyer said.
“No. No. After the hanging.”
“Hanging him wasn’t enough?”
“The bastards cut off his head. It’s stuck on a pike at the Fahrtor gate.”
16
Ephraim Hess was tearing chunks off the bread, dipping them into his soup, forcing himself to eat, though he had no appetite. He did not know when he wou
ld get to eat again. He might never eat again; if they got caught, the penalty most likely would be death. Eva sat across from him, unable to swallow a morsel. The baby was asleep on the bed, which took up most of the kitchen of their two-room apartment; the front room was the rag shop.
The blacksmith’s head would be facing the river, Ephraim assumed, facing the bridge across which travelers came. Beyond that he did not know what to expect. Would it still be dripping blood? Probably not. Would it be smiling at having escaped this difficult life? Would it be grimacing in the final pain of the hanging? Would it look still alive and ready to rejoin its body? Would the eyes be rolled back in the ghastly sightlessness of death? He did not know. All he knew was that the head of this innocent Jew murdered by the Gentiles could not be allowed to remain where it was, the eyes and lips pecked at by gulls till a disfigured face was thrown to the fish. It had to be rescued, be given a proper burial — with the rest of the body if that could be found, without it if necessary.
The way to retrieve it had come to him in a jolting image, as if he’d been physically struck, the entire plan visible at once. Quickly he had acquired the cooperation he needed. The cabinet maker would nail together a coffin this evening and leave it outside his shop. The slaughterer, with some misgivings, would leave the back door to the slaughterhouse unlocked. The Liebmann brothers, more muscular than he was, always ready for action, had agreed eagerly when he explained their roles. Everything was ready.
Eva had told him she feared he would not come back, that little Solomon would grow up fatherless. Ephraim replied that he could never be a proper father if he didn’t listen to his heart.
“What about listening to your head?”
“Think about the blacksmith’s head.”
He’d taken her in his arms and their two thin bodies had pressed together and he’d reminded her that when they first became lovers they’d agreed to fight whatever battles needed to be fought to make the world better.