The Origin of Sorrow

by Robert Mayer

  With her head on her pillow, she tried to count Yahweh’s hands. Tears blurred her eyes, she couldn’t see them.

  Only women lived in the Judengasse. Men did not live there at all.

  The notion came to Guttle as she calmed.

  The women emptied the chamber pots into the ditch, went to the market after the Christian ladies had picked the best vegetables, cooked the meals, washed the linens and the clothes and hung them to dry out back without benefit of sun, carried babies in mild or severe discomfort for nine months and bore them with terrible pain — Yahweh’s everlasting punishment to Eve — only to see disappointment on the faces of their husbands if the child was a girl; only to watch in horror as half their babies died.

  The men, the pious ones especially, did not live here. They lived in the years of the Torah — of Abraham and Joseph and Moses — which they read every day, morning and evening, in the schul. Or they lived in the abstract world of the Talmud, devouring and examining old arguments and theories, splitting niceties like slicing onions, till a woman could cry. At night, at home, they read aloud from the Talmud or chanted ancient prayers, the same prayers once chanted in the courts of Saul and David. When they were not dovaning in the desert of the Torah, they lived in the black forest of their work. This rubbed some of them with the coarse salt of life — the coffin maker, the rag picker. But the others, like her father, like Meyer Amschel, hid their heads in the mathematics of money. Her father, when his mind was not in his prayers, was at the court of Sachsen-Meiningen, making shrewd investments that added to the piles of coins in the Prince’s vaults. Meyer Amschel, when he was not walking in the desert with Isaac or Jacob, lived in the antiquity of his coins and statues, in the marble times of the Greeks and the Romans — and in the countinghouse of Crown Prince Wilhelm, and in the vaults of his imagined future wealth. Both lived far from the grit and stink of the lane — the two men in whose hands her future rested.

  That was all right, she told herself. She could be the gritty and sardonic and ever-faithful Sancho Panza if Meyer would be Don Quixote, riding into righteous battle with a shaving bowl for a yarmulke. He had the appearance for it — tall and lean, with a woeful countenance. She was well aware that, in fanciful books, prostitutes might become virgins — but even in fantasies women did not become knights.

  What a strange book that was. Meyer had bought it for her, a gift, in the spring; it was long and difficult, she’d only just finished reading it. Every time her father had seen her with it he’d looked uncomfortable. She’d hoped he wouldn’t think less of Meyer for giving her a Spanish fable; the Spaniards, everyone knew, had not been good to the Jews. When she finished the book she had urged Meyer to read it; he’d replied that he didn’t have the time.

  Sleepy at last, she turned onto her side, facing away from Avra, trying to put Meyer out of her mind. When she closed her eyes she saw him riding tall on his trusty steed Rozinante — or, if he preferred, Gulden. But their conversation during the stroll home still tormented her.

  The young woman is walking barefoot through the dewy Spanish countryside, alongside the sea of sleep. Dawn is about to break. In her head she sings an aria:

  The Cantor longs for me,

  Perhaps I ought to be

  Where he can sing to me

  Through all eternity.

  I know which one I love,

  And so does God above,

  But Meyer’s always right —

  Which makes me want to fight!

  If I were Viktor’s spouse

  We’d have the finest house,

  He’d buy the softest beds

  Where we would lay our heads;

  He’d not preserve my loins

  Like some historic coins;

  And when each child came

  He’d sing its sacred name

  In tones so proud and clear,

  The lane itself would cheer.

  Yet Meyer is my bliss,

  Why do I think of this?

  Why does a donkey hiss

  That something is a miss.?

  Because he waits and waits,

  And does not link our fates!

  He has not sought my hand;

  I do not understand.

  I left him in a huff,

  Feeling not good enough.

  He swears that I’m his prayer.

  — I’m Dulcinea!

  18

  Awake at dawn as usual, Hiram Liebmann had just placed his chair at the third-floor window when by first light he saw the gates swing open and something — it resembled an animal — come flying through and land on the cobbles. A second thing followed, a third, a fourth, before the gates were pulled shut. After hitting the cobbles the things lay motionless.

  In the faint light he could not see what they were. He pulled on his clothes and went downstairs and into the lane. When he saw what was there he fell to his knees beside the sewage trench, and vomited. He continued to throw up until he had nothing left to give. He wiped his mouth with his shirt and without looking at them again he made his way, sweating, to the house, up the two flights of stairs, and woke his brother. They had no hand signals for this. Hiram told him to get dressed quickly and come down, they needed to do something.

  When Hersch saw the objects in the lane he bent over the ditch as well, but managed not to vomit. Hiram told him to follow, and he crossed the ditch and ran down the narrow alley leading to the Hinterpfann, and pounded on the door. He knew there was cloth in here. They had to cover those bloody things before women or children saw. He pounded with the side of his fist until Meyer Rothschild opened the door, wearing his gray sleep shirt, which came to his knees.

  “What is it?” He knew Hersch still was angry with him.

  “They’ve drawn and quartered the blacksmith. They threw his parts inside the gate. We need cloth to wrap him.”

  Meyer disappeared into a small back room, and returned with a bolt of canvas his brothers hadn’t taken to the Fair. He grabbed a pair of shears from the table and handed them to Hiram. “I’ll come as soon as I put clothes on,” Meyer said.

  “We can do this,” Hersch said. “You round up a minyan. We have to bury him before the people see.”

  “What about a coffin?”

  “There should be one in front of the coffin maker’s, with his head in it.”

  “His head?”

  “We stole it last night from the Fahrtor gate.”

  Hiram pulled at his brother’s arm. Carrying the canvas and the shears, they hurried through the alley.

  “This is their answer,” Meyer muttered.

  The four elongated segments of the body were strewn on the cobbles amid splashes of blood. Hiram unrolled part of the canvas and Hersch cut off a length. Together they lifted one of the arm-and-chest parts, trying not to look at the torn flesh. After they wrapped it Hersch knelt beside the trench and threw up. A moment later they were joined by Otto Kracauer, the butcher. His son Izzy, getting ready to knock on doors, had heard the commotion and looked out the window and awakened his father, who came bustling down with his stained apron tied over his sleeping gown.

  “Cut the canvas and don’t look,” he told Hersch. “I can do the rest.”

  The brothers cut three more sections of cloth, and the butcher, who was used to this sort of thing with cows, wrapped the parts quickly. Meyer came stumbling along the lane carrying one end of the coffin. His brother Moish held the other end. They set it down near the bundles.

  “It’s empty,” Meyer said.

  “Not possible,” Hersch sneered, and pulled off the lid. “The rag dealer!” he said, and ran off in that direction, and knocked on the door till Ephraim Hess, pulling on his clothes, opened it.

  “The head’s not in the coffin.”

  “I know.”

  “Where is it? We’ve got the rest.”

  “How … You’ve got the rest?”

  “Never mind now, we need the head.”

  “It’s here.”

  “We’l
l bring the coffin.”

  He ran back in the brightening lane and the butcher, Moish and the two brothers carried the coffin, heavy with the blacksmith’s torn body, to the rag dealer’s shop. Ephraim removed the wrapped head from the pile of coats and placed it in the coffin. They assured him the space they had left was the proper end.

  A light drizzle began to fall. They noticed that the air was cooler than it had been only the day before. Hiram watched as Meyer went from door to door, pounded with his fist, explaining that they needed five more men to make a minyan for the blacksmith’s funeral.

  Hersch wondered if he and Hiram needed to invent a hand sign for drawn-and-quartered.

  The men lifted the coffin onto their shoulders and began to carry it down the lane. Those that Meyer had awakened fell in behind them. More men, dressing for morning services, heard the footsteps on the cobbles and opened their doors and looked out and saw what was happening and, learning what was going on, followed. As they passed the synagogue the raindrops grew larger, the rain became steadier. The men continued walking, wearing hats or yarmulkes that darkened instantly. Rabbi Simcha heard the passing feet and looked out and saw the coffin, raindrops bouncing noisily upon it, and joined the line beside Meyer. By the time they neared the cemetery the coffin had a tail like a dark comet, of more than two hundred men.

  “Rain at last,” Meyer said to the Rabbi. “Yahweh is weeping for the blacksmith. He should have saved him instead.”

  He looked up and let the rain fall steadily onto his face, his chest. Yussel Kahn approached and asked what he was doing. “What does it look like I’m doing?” He swallowed rain as he spoke.

  “It seems out of character. Something Guttle might do.”

  “There’s no such thing as character unless you can step out of it. Otherwise, it’s obsession.”

  “You know what, my friend? Guttle is good for you.”

  “This is news?”

  The pallbearers paused at the cemetery gate. They didn’t know where to take the coffin; no plot had been prepared. Rabbi Simcha spoke to Hersch. “Put him by the Beckers. I think they have room for one more.”

  Inside the north gate, where the rain had eased to a drizzle, Izzy and Guttle were on their knees. Between them was a pail of soapy water. With wet rags staining pink they were scrubbing away the blacksmith’s blood.

  “Why do you think the Christians hate us so?” Guttle asked, her eyes riveted to the dark stains. It was a question she had asked her father many times. His answers often varied, and never sufficed.

  “Because of the church,” Isidor said.

  “What do you mean?”

  Settling back on his haunches, Isidor said, “When the church was formed, it needed an enemy. People band together when they are against something, not when they are for something. So the church gave us horns and a tail, and made us children of Satan. By hating us, the Christians grew strong. Like an animal drinking blood.”

  That reasoning she had never heard. “How do you know such things?”

  “I think a lot.”

  “You also talk a lot with Rabbi Simcha.”

  Izzy grinned, ran his hand through his hair, made sure his yarmulke had not fallen off.

  “So what enemy has kept us Jews together for thousands of years?” Guttle asked.

  “That’s easy,” the boy replied. “Everyone else.”

  They leaned forward then and worked quickly, dipping the rags into the water, scrubbing, wringing them out, scrubbing, till Izzy paused, wiped his brow with his sleeve. The drizzle had darkened his blond hair and pasted it to his head. “But a person could say this was Martin Luther’s fault,” he said.

  Guttle braced for a welcome history lesson. “Why him?”

  Izzy pulled a paper from his pocket. “Listen to what Luther wrote about the Jews:

  “‘The Catholics have dealt with the Jews as if they were dogs and not human beings. They have done nothing for them but curse them and seize their wealth. I would advise and beg everybody to deal kindly with the Jews.’”

  “My goodness,” Guttle said. “Let’s invite him to dinner.”

  “Guttle, he’s been dead for two hundred years.”

  “A Gentile says something nice about the Jews, we shouldn’t be too picky.”

  “This is serious. He wrote that in 1523. Twenty years later, after the Jews had refused to convert to his new church, he had some different opinions.”

  She wrung out her rag, dipped it into the pail, continued scrubbing the cobbles while he read from his notes. The drizzle stopped entirely, as if Yahweh, too, wanted to hear.

  “‘The blind Jews are truly stupid fools,’ Luther wrote. ‘Be on your guard against the Jews, knowing that wherever they have their synagogues, nothing is found but a den of devils in which sheer self-glory, conceit, lies, blasphemy, and defaming of God and men are practiced most maliciously’.”

  “That’s how he deals kindly?”

  “It gets worse. ‘They are nothing but thieves and robbers who daily eat no morsel and wear no thread of clothing which they have not stolen and pilfered from us by means of their accursed usury.’”

  “Where did you find these things?” Guttle asked.

  “The cabinet maker brought a book from his bookseller. I won’t read everything I copied, there’s too much. But listen to what he says should be done to the Jews:

  “‘Set fire to their synagogues or schuls and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians … If this does not help, we must drive them out like mad dogs. Eject them forever from this country.’”

  Izzy folded the paper.

  “He doesn’t mention hanging us,” Guttle said. “Or quartering us. I guess that’s because he was a man of God.” She stood and peered at the cobbles, to see if any trace of blood remained. Under the leaden sky it was hard to tell. Wringing her rag into the bucket, she dumped the pink water into the trench and watched it swirl away. “How can you stand to read that traif?”

  “It’s part of my studies.”

  “Maybe your father is right. Maybe you’d be better off cleaning up chicken shit.”

  “History has to acknowledge these things.”

  “Perhaps. Though sometimes I think we’d be better off burying the past with the dead.”

  “The present is the child of the past. It always will be.”

  Guttle knelt to clean the blood from a stone they had missed. “I suppose. But you made my head hurt. Sometimes I think Melka’s head must always hurt — absorbing that kind of trash so we don’t.”

  “Guttle, Melka of the South Gate isn’t real. I can’t find any proof that she ever lived.”

  “Did you find proof that she didn’t? What’s in that attic down there?”

  “It’s boarded up. The whole house is boarded up, no one wants to live there, because of the Melka stories. But that doesn’t prove anything. Her name is not in the Memory Book.

  “She belongs in your history regardless. There has to be some explanation for why we’re not all insane.”

  “I can’t write about her, she’s not real.”

  “What the people believe — isn’t that real? Aren’t those the only facts in the Bible — what people used to believe?”

  “Most people believe in Yahweh. Not in Melka.”

  “I think most people here believe in both. The women, anyway.”

  “Believing in Melka is blasphemous.”

  “No, it’s not. Only worshipping her would be blasphemous. Maybe Yahweh created her. to do His work.”

  “A madwoman?” Izzy ran his hand across his chin, where the slight stubble of a blond beard had lately begun to grow. He seemed offended. “Maybe you should have my task.”

  “Don’t be upset with me, Iz. You’re doing wond
erfully. That’s what Rabbi Simcha says. Besides, a girl wouldn’t be allowed to do it.”

  They began to walk toward their homes, side by side, Guttle carrying the bucket of stained rags. “Some day maybe we will,” she said. “Some day maybe a girl will write what’s happening to the Jews, and everyone will read it.”

  Izzy glanced at her, but didn’t argue.

  The merchants and their assistants, Guttle among them, had changed to dry clothes and were passing through the north gate to walk to the Fair when they saw two police wagons parked there, the horses standing quietly. Manacled in the rear of one wagon was the night guard from the south gate. When Kapitän Klaus arrived to oversee the north gate, he was quickly surrounded by other officers, manacled, and, blustering at the outrage, was hustled into the second wagon. Seated stiff as a pike on a white stallion, watching, several silver medals on the chest of his black uniform, was the mustached Kommandant of the Frankfurt Polizei.

  Loitering nearby, pretending to repair the heel of his shoe, Yussel Kahn listened to the talk of the Constables. When he caught up with Meyer and Guttle, he told them what he had heard. “It seems the Kapitän was furious that the blacksmith’s head had been stolen. He wanted to ‘turn the Judengasse upside down’ — those were his words, they said — to question everyone with the tip of his sword resting on their neck, find those who did it, kill those who would not speak. A stolen head massacre. But he couldn’t do that, because the Fair is on. It would embarrass the Empress, with so many foreign nobles in the city. Instead, the Polizei Kommandant is replacing all of the guards — at the lane and at the Fahrtor Gate — for not preventing it. In case one was bribed to look the other way. Including the Kapitän. That’s the gossip, anyway.”