The Origin of Sorrow

by Robert Mayer

  “We were so young then,” she’d said.

  “It was only two years ago.”

  “I know. We were so young then.”

  They weren’t married in the records of the Judengasse. They couldn’t be; Ephraim was still three years shy of twenty-five. Eva was nineteen. He called her his wife, and the lane accepted the fiction, especially after she became pregnant. The Rabbis weren’t happy, but they were not about to make trouble for young lovers because of Frankfurt’s laws. Frankfurt could enforce its laws itself if it found out.

  Ephraim stepped into the lane and looked up at the sliver of sky visible above the tenements. It was weary with evening. By now the Liebmann brothers would be hidden in the slaughterhouse, having told the young guard Fritz they were going to buy a chicken. Before they returned the guard at the gate would have changed; the night guard wouldn’t miss them. In the slaughterhouse they’d remove one of the two layers of clothing he’d told them to wear. He was confident they’d time it right, the deaf mute was precise with his pocket watch. When Otto Kracauer locked up his chickens and cows for the night, which he should be doing now — leaving the rear door unlocked — the brothers would remain inside.

  In the rag shop, Ephraim took two dresses off their hooks. He folded them, stepped away and looked at them. He decided to add a third. He returned to the kitchen and sat beside Eva on the bed and held her hand. He asked if she were sure she wanted to come with him. She repeated that she was, that he would be safer with her and the baby along; a family man would attract less attention. But he could feel her bones trembling.

  “Adonai will protect us,” he said.

  “Like He protected the blacksmith from Mainz?”

  They sat in silence, hearing only their own thumping hearts. Ephraim lit a small lamp in the quick-falling dark. Solomon woke and began to cry. Eva gave him a breast.

  The baby was almost sated when they heard a boom that sounded like thunder over the city. “The first fireworks,” Ephraim said. “That’s our signal.”

  Eva wrapped the child in a blanket. Ephraim took the bundle of dresses from the shop. He closed the door and together they walked toward the north gate. Ephraim showed their two Fair passes to the night guard, and held up the folded dresses. “Business was so good today, we have to replace our stock.”

  The sky was breaking up with exploding lights. Crackling leaped over the walls. The guard handed their passes back and waved them through. They walked from the lane, passing the darkened slaughterhouse on the left, and turned right at the first crossing. Eva touched his arm. “What if he’d asked why we couldn’t wait till morning?”

  “We have passes with the official seal. He’s not supposed to stop us.”

  They moved along in the dark street, turned right a second time. Ahead of them was the forbidding outer face of the long ghetto wall. Beside it ran a cobbled walk. Across the street was a city park, appearing deserted in the darkness.

  “Find a place that’s comfortable,” Ephraim said. “But don’t fall asleep. You have to be watching for me when I come back.” He handed her two of the three dresses in his bundle, keeping a dark blue one. He stripped off the outer of his two layers of clothing and gave her those.

  “Do you really think I could fall asleep?”

  “I hope not.” He kissed her on the mouth, a long kiss, as if it might be their last. He pulled himself away and scurried into the deeper dark at the base of the wall.

  He wondered why he needed to be a hero, to risk everything for a dead man. But what was his life for? To sell secondhand clothes?

  If the timing was right, the mute would at this moment be moving in the dark outside the other wall. Hersch, keeping in the shadows, would be circling three blocks and joining him here.

  Ephraim thought: it would be easy to escape from the Judengasse. But escape to where? You would have to leave your friends, go to another city. Perhaps to another Jewish ghetto. That’s why, year after year, there was so little ferment in the lane. Rumor had it that the Judengasse Council had petitioned the city months ago to unlock the gates on Sundays, and allow Jews to enter the city parks. Rumor had it that the city had not even bothered to answer.

  He heard the sound of faint footsteps on the cobbles. Before he realized it, Hersch was beside him; for a sturdy fellow he could be light of foot. They nodded to one another curtly; they were not great friends. Ephraim had selected the brothers because they fit his needs. Hersch was both strong and angry; Hiram would not be able to answer the Fahrtor guard’s questions.

  “Your brother is on his way?”

  Hersch’s nod was barely discernible.

  “Follow me,” Ephraim whispered.

  They slipped quietly along the base of the wall. A pale quarter moon was visible intermittently between armadas of scudding clouds. Above and behind them, exploding fireworks battled for their attention, but they kept moving.

  Ephraim paused, stuck out his arm to stop Hersch. “There’s people in the park,” he whispered. “Watching the sky.”

  “What should we do?”

  “Keep going — and hope the fireworks last.”

  They shrunk into themselves and crept if possible more quietly than before, till they passed the end of the park and the end of the wall and could smell the river, heavy with the humid scent of fog and fish. They walked downhill beside the sloping sluice that carried the wastes from the lane. As they neared the river they could just make out the Fahrtor gate in front of shreds of fog that drifted above the water. They peered into the low darkness. Clouds slid like ice from in front of the sliver of moon. They could see the lone night guard on the stone platform this side of the gate, the outline of sailing vessels anchored behind him. The head would be just the other side of the stone arch, below the Judensau. The only way to get to it would be by wading through the water.

  They crept near the river’s edge. The lapping of the current became a booming in their ears. Sitting on wet dirt behind a cluster of leafy bush, they removed their shoes. Ephraim placed the rolled blue dress on the sand. By the hint of moon they could see rats drinking.

  The guard on the Fahrtor platform was perhaps forty metres from them. The rag dealer thought: now everything rests on a deaf mute. Impatient, he whispered, “What’s he waiting for?”

  “He’s timing it. He wants to make sure he doesn’t start before we’re here.”

  The croaking of a strange bird sounded along the narrow beach.

  “What was that?”

  “That’s him.”

  “He’s supposed to bang on a boat. What’s he doing?”

  “Improvising. Don’t worry.”

  A moment later they heard the banging start, a stick hitting the wooden hull of a small boat. Interspersed was the croaking sound, if not a large bird than a strangling dog.

  “It’s the only sound he can make,” Hersch said.

  They stared at the guard silhouetted against the fog. He glanced in the direction of the sounds, then up at the fireworks he’d been watching. The knocking began again, louder, and the screeching. The guard looked along the shore. When the noise didn’t stop, he climbed down from his platform onto the beach, and walked along the water’s edge, to see what the problem was.

  They knew what he would find: Hiram up to his neck in the water, banging with a stick for help, as if he were drowning. Trying to shout.

  “Now,” Ephraim urged.

  Stooping low, they crept into the water. It was icy on their feet, their shins, shriveled their balls as it clawed at their waists, perhaps not as cold as it would have been were it not for the long hot spell, but cold enough to cut their breath short. They waded to the far side of the second arch, the water burdening their clothes, lapping at their chests. Ephraim reached his hands up to the side of the bridge. Hersch filled his lungs with air and bent beneath him. Ephraim found Hersch’s knees with his feet and climbed. His wet clothing was heavy, was dripping into the water as he twisted to perch on Hersch’s bent back. Holding his breath,
he waited till he felt certain the guard was not coming back, then pulled himself onto the bridge. When he looked up, he had to grab onto the arch to keep his balance. The metal pike was directly in front of him. The face of the blacksmith, his dark hair in unruly curls, was staring down. The head seemed to be smiling grimly, the lower lip pulled down, the lower teeth showing, like gargoyles on Gentile buildings he’d seen on the way to the Fair.

  Girding himself, Ephraim gripped the pike with both hands and strained to lift it from its iron holder. It came loose in his hands, but with the large head on top that end began to pull down towards the river. He tried to keep it upright but wasn’t strong enough, the head was wrenching the pike from his hands. Beneath the clatter of the fireworks and the rumble of the river he thought he heard the severed head speaking, thought he saw the drooping lips moving.

  Shma Yisroel, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echud.

  Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord Is One.

  “It’s falling!” he whispered.

  The iron pike clanged against the bridge. Standing below in the water, Hersch caught the loose head in his arms as it plummeted. He hoped a horde of rats wouldn’t come swimming at the smell of blood. He didn’t know if rats could swim.

  “Who’s there!” a voice shouted.

  Ephraim leaped off the bridge into the water. They were hidden in shadow. Should they stay or run? The guard surely had a musket. But he might miss in the pale moonlight if they fled. If they ran in two directions, one of them, at least, would live.

  They didn’t move.

  They heard a dull thunk, then footsteps on the stones. A white face appeared at the river’s edge. It emitted a soft croak.

  They hauled their heavy legs out of the water, Hersch still clutching the head to his chest. Hiram was there to meet them. Hersch gave the head to the rag dealer, and signaled with his fingers to his brother, “Where’s the guard?” On one of his fingers a piece of cartilage clung like a leech. He shook his hand; it did not fly off, he had to use his other hand to pull it free. He was about to toss it into the river when Ephraim grabbed the sliver and pressed it up into the blacksmith’s neck. “We have little enough of him,” he said.

  The guard? Hiram signaled to Hersch. He put his hands together and raised them above his head and made a clouting motion. He had hit the guard with a board.

  “We’re kaputt,” Ephraim said. “Let’s hope he isn’t dead.”

  “We were kaputt if he caught us.”

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  They hurried along the beach. Ephraim patted the sand in the dark till his fingers found the dress he had left there. As he lifted it, a rat with shiny wet fur spilled out and scurried away. Carefully he wrapped the head in the dress. He recited the Shma aloud, just as the drooping lips had done.

  The fireworks had stopped. He could only hope the Gentiles had left the park without spotting Eva.

  Hersch and Hiram took a step away.

  “Wait,” Ephraim said. “We have to change the plan. You shouldn’t sleep in the slaughterhouse.”

  “Why not?”

  “If that guard is dead, they’ll be searching everywhere. You should sleep in your own beds.”

  “How can we get through the gate?”

  “Change to your dry clothes at the butcher’s. Hide the wet ones. Circle around and make it look like you’re coming back from the Fair. Lean against each other like you’re drunk. Slobber to the guard about how the fireworks were wonderful, too bad he had to work.”

  Ephraim set the wrapped head on the ground. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his and Eva’s passes to the Fair. They were wet. He handed them to Hersch. “Wave these at the guard as you go in. He won’t bother to check the names, not when you’re coming back.”

  “You think they’ll raid the lane, search every house?”

  “Not for the head. Not with the Fair going on, too many foreigners here. But if the guard is dead … ”

  “Let’s go,” Hiram signaled to his brother.

  They had scurried about ten steps in the dark of different directions when the voice of the guard shot over them from the river’s edge. “Halt, who goes running there?” They bent their heads against musket fire that didn’t come. Ephraim tightened his hold on his bundle and ran up beside the sluice to the ghetto wall, hoping he wasn’t jarring the blacksmith too much; they had to get home before word reached the north gate that the head had been stolen.

  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, w
earing 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.”