The Origin of Sorrow

by Robert Mayer

  The men raised their eyebrows. “I’d like to have seen that,” Paul offered. “Is that a special talent of Jewish girls?”

  “Guttle will be teaching the rest of us.”

  Guttle smiled weakly again.

  “Excuse me, we did not introduce ourselves. I am Paul von Brunwald. This is my friend, Wolf Goethe. Our dear mothers have business with a dressmaker here, so we rode along.”

  “Your mother is the Countess?”

  “That is she.”

  “My mother, that is she. The dressmaker, I mean. I am Dvorah Schlicter. This is Guttle Schnapper, and this is Doctor Kirsch.”

  ”I hope you’re not badly hurt,” Wolf said.

  “She just needs rest, and some fresh air.”

  The men inhaled the stench. Paul thought: perhaps we could take them out walking in a park . . .

  “A female Doctor,” Wolf said. “And Jewish. You cannot attend to Christians, I assume.”

  “That is the law.”

  “Yet one Jewish Doctor at all times is permitted to live outside the Judengasse. Do you know why? It’s because the nobles and the Princes prefer a Jewish Doctor.”

  “Your words, not mine,” Rebecca said.

  Guttle raised her hand to her head.

  “It still hurts?”

  Guttle nodded, closing her eyes with weariness. She wondered how these Christian dandies with their powdered wigs had gotten into her white horse dream.

  “We’d better get you back to bed. You still need rest.”

  “It was good to meet you gentlemen,” Dvorah said. “I hope your mothers are pleased with their new dresses.”

  Paul reached into the pocket of his vest. “My card,” he said, handing it to Dvorah. “If I can ever be of service.”

  The women displayed small smiles and turned to go. When they were inside, the young men walked on. “Who would have thought it?” Paul said. “The Three Graces live in the Judengasse.”

  For a moment Wolf felt dizzy, as if the tenements that seemed to lean together at their height were about to fall in on him. How could people exist like this? He found the half-light at mid-afternoon maddening. “Angels dwelling in hell,” he murmured.

  “You have to admit,” Paul said, “that this place is filled with your kind of girl.”

  “What kind of girl is that?”

  “Unavailable.”

  “You know how it is with me, my friend. I laugh at my own heart — and do what it wishes. But it wasn’t me who just left a calling card.”

  They reached the fly-ridden horse. A Polizei Kapitäin was beside the Constable; he appeared to be giving instructions to another officer. The men paused to watch, to see if the officers would try to pull it out.

  “Have you noticed something?” Goethe asked. “There is not one bit of nature in this place. Nothing natural at all. Not a tree. Not a flower. Not a blade of grass. You can barely see the sky. Look at that horse. A handsome stallion, the apex of nature. He should be galloping across green meadows in the dewy dawn, as he was born to do, and mounting lusty mares. Instead they rode him in here, and he’s dead in a ditch of shit. A symbol, perhaps, of the absence of nature in the Jews.”

  Paul knew enough to keep his mouth shut when his friend took off on a flight of philosophy.

  “Imagine, a state of total divorce from the natural world,” Wolf went on. “How does one survive that? Unless … ”

  Paul waited. “Unless what?”

  “Unless faith in the Creator is the internal equivalent of nature. Belief as a fertile field.”

  “Meaning this is a Garden of Eden?” Paul looked about him, sniffing at the air.

  “Hardly. But what if the mind is a garden? What if the brain is not a machine in the service of reason, as the French philosophers would have it. Perhaps, in the believing mind, the Garden of Eden still resides. And blossoms with art, with literature.”

  “Why just in the believing mind?”

  Goethe nodded appreciatively. “Good question. One I will have to think about.”

  “To my mind, that redhead Dvorah is built for more than inner faith. I could show her some lovely country gardens.”

  “There you go, bringing the discourse down to earthy essentials.”

  “I don’t have poetry to warm my bed.”

  The dead horse apparently was going nowhere. The officers remained idle, waiting.

  “I’ve heard of a race of horses,” Wolf said, “who, when they’re injured, bite into a vein, so they can breathe more freely — and thus gain eternal freedom. Much more noble than a musket ball between the eyes.”

  “Not every horse can be noble,” Paul replied. “It’s a lot to expect.”

  Wolf saw his mother waiting near the carriage up ahead, and hurried to her. Her handkerchief once more covered her nose. “Are we late? Where’s the countess, Mother?”

  “Up the stairs, paying a deposit.”

  “And you? Didn’t you order a dress?”

  “The seamstress is good,” Frau Goethe said. “Her clothes are quite beautiful. But put a dress on my body that a Jewess has touched so intimately?” She closed her eyes, and shuddered. “I couldn’t do that.”

  “Then why did you come?”

  “To keep the Countess company, of course. In case of trouble.”

  “Trouble?”

  His mother roamed her eyes over the entire Judengasse, and said, “You know.”

  The Chief Rabbi came to see Guttle after obtaining permission from Doctor Kirsch. When he stepped through the curtain she was startled at first by a bulky shape in black coming at her out of the white. Standing beside her bed, he expressed his concern. He inquired how the collision with the horse had occurred.

  “Yahweh was punishing me. I was having bad thoughts.”

  “That’s not correct Talmud, Guttle. Yahweh may punish us for our deeds, but not for our thoughts. He knows we cannot control our thoughts. He made us that way. In fact, what happened to you could be looked at very differently. It could be that He was protecting you, not punishing you.”

  “By sending a horse to kick me in the head?”

  “Galloping horses we don’t see in the lane very often.” The Rabbi eased himself onto the wooden chair beside the bed. “You were running in a reckless state, I gather. You might have tripped on a cobble and fell face first into the filth of the ditch. You might have broken your leg, much as the horse did. Perhaps Yahweh sent an angel in the form of a horse to protect you.”

  “An angel in the form of a horse?”

  “In the form of an angel it would have caused a lot of talk.” The Rabbi stroked his beard by way of grinning.

  His words were comforting. She promised the Rabbi she would think about that.

  She was propped up in bed, leaning on pillows, when Doctor Kirsch returned. She said her head felt better, and asked if the Doctor could stay. The Doctor sat on the edge of the bed, and waited.

  “Why do people feel jealous?” Guttle asked.

  Surprised, the Doctor took time to think. “I suppose it’s a fear, emerging from deep inside us, that someone else will get what we want. Or take away what we have.”

  “If you’re wondering why I’m asking, I got hurt because I was jealous.”

  “Perhaps you were punishing yourself. We have a bad conscience, and an accident happens. Perhaps we make it happen.”

  “It was stupid of me to be jealous of Meyer Amschel. Don’t you think?”

  “That’s for you to decide, Guttle. Why were you jealous?”

  “The widow from Mainz told me she likes him. She’s very … appealing.”

  “Do you really think she could take Meyer from you? Meyer likes the way you look, the way you think, the way you make your jokes. Otherwise you wouldn’t be betrothed.”

  Guttle looked down at the blanket covering her legs. “But what if . . .” She flushed, and could not complete the sentence.

  “Oh, that’s what you’re concerned about — what if the widow is … appealing … at
things you have never done.”

  “Meyer is twenty-six, he must have done those things. That alone makes me nervous.”

  “You should hope he has. A teacher has to learn his subject before he can teach it. I’m sure Meyer will be a good teacher.”

  “But the widow… ?”

  “If you trust Meyer in other things, you need to trust him in this as well. Meyer travels a lot on business, does he not? There are lots of widows out there. Either you’ll trust Meyer, or you’ll make your life miserable.”

  Guttle leaned forward, pressed her forehead against the Doctor’s shoulder, felt soothed by its warmth, its solidity.

  “Perhaps because of the absence of sunlight,” the Doctor said, “many people in the lane seem to burn with an inner fire. You do, Meyer does, Yussel Kahn, Ephraim Hess — lots of others. Don’t waste your inner fire on things unworthy.”

  The Doctor caressed her cheek. Guttle closed her eyes. Sleepily, she lay her head on the pillow.

  Her father had been away at the court of Sachsen-Meiningen. When he returned and learned what had happened he rushed to the hospital, and hugged Guttle tightly, almost desperately. He looked at the patch on her temple. “Mein Gott, you could have been killed!”

  “I know, Papa. That’s why I have to ask you something. I don’t want to die without being married.”

  “Of course not. So?”

  “So you should let Meyer and me get married right away.”

  “In case another horse comes galloping before August?”

  “You never know what can happen.”

  “On the contrary, I do know what can happen. You can marry on the twenty-ninth of August, as planned. Not a day before.”

  “Oh, Papa!”

  “I know you’re not feeling well, but don’t ‘Oh, Papa’ me. For one thing, I have to go see the Chief Rabbi, something about the message that courier brought. Then I’ll come back. But first I have to ask you something. Some heder boys saw me passing just now. They didn’t whisper, ‘That’s the Court Jew,’ as they sometimes do. Do you know what they said?”

  She waited.

  “They said, ‘That’s the Papa of the girl who stopped the horse.’”

  Guttle covered her face with her hands.

  “Wait, there’s more. Some of them applauded, and shouted, ‘Hurrah, his daughter saved the children.’”

  Uncomprehending, Guttle looked at him. “What are they talking about?”

  “You’re asking me? I’m the one who’s asking you.”

  22

  Rabbi Eleazar was seated at his desk, wearing a yarmulke instead of his tall round fur hat, when Wolf Schnapper knocked on the door and was told to enter. Rabbi Simcha sat in an upholstered armchair. Both appeared grim, as if another friend had died. Simcha asked how Guttle was recuperating, then the Chief Rabbi handed Schnapper a letter on yellow parchment. “From the Frankfurt Council,” the Rabbi said. “By the courier your blessed daughter knocked off his horse. One would think she knew what he was carrying.”

  Wolf’s insides churned beneath his waistcoat. The Frankfurt Council rarely if ever sent good news. He pulled his spectacles from an inner pocket, put them on and read the letter. His right hand fell to his side, limp. Lifting the parchment, he scanned it again, reading parts aloud, as if the others had not parsed it several times.

  “Your request that we permit Jews to walk in the parks and promenades without hindrance is denied … The request for equality is one more proof of the boundless arrogance of this nation which makes every effort at every opportunity to advance itself … If we granted the request, Christian women walking on the promenade might be harassed by hordes of Jews.”

  Simcha muttered, “Such boundless arrogance. The nerve of us.”

  Wolf handed back the letter. “Six months it took them to come up with that?”

  “Apparently it was a difficult decision,” Simcha said dryly.

  “Now we have a difficult decision,” the Chief Rabbi said. “Since you are Chairman of the council at present, you should be part of it. The question is, how to tell this to the congregation. Or whether to tell them at all.”

  “The request last spring was secret,” Wolf said. “But there have been rumors.”

  “Everyone knows the courier was from the Frankfurt Council,” Rabbi Simcha said. “People will want to know what it was about.”

  The Chief Rabbi stroked his beard, his stubby fingers idly combing errant hairs. “We’ll have to let it be known. The question is, how? Should we summon a public meeting?”

  “That would raise expectancy — and create serious disappointment,” Wolf said. “Perhaps a lot of anger.”

  “Or I could announce it at morning services.”

  “It’s not really a spiritual matter,” Rabbi Simcha said.

  The Chief Rabbi raised his eyebrows at this fine distinction, though he knew that was Simcha’s way.

  “You could fasten the letter to the door of the schul,” Wolf said. “Everyone will read it soon enough. The disappointment will not be great, since no one expected more.”

  “Like Luther nailing his protests,” Simcha said.

  Rabbi Eleazar raised his eyebrows again. “That might be the simplest. I’ll have the shammus do the nailing tomorrow, instead of me.” He glanced wryly at Simcha. “So it won’t look too spiritual.”

  Guttle spent the night in the hospital at the insistence of Doctor Kirsch, who wanted to be certain no delayed problems surfaced. When, the next morning, Guttle said she felt fine, the Doctor asked Dvorah to accompany her home.

  As they walked slowly up the lane, they saw a knot of people gathered. The dead stallion still lay in the ditch, still covered with flies. Two city workers, stepping into the muck wearing high boots, were fastening belts and chains around the corpse. A strange predicament for an angel, Guttle thought. A heavy wagon pulled by four dray horses had been driven to the gate, but was too wide to fit into the lane on either side of the ditch.

  As the friends reached the group of onlookers, people recognized them and opened a path. “It’s the girl who stopped the horse!” someone said, and the others began to clap.

  Guttle’s face flushed. Her temple began to throb under her patch. She leaned toward Dvorah. “Why are they doing that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Other people came to see what the applause was about. Word skirted among them like a weasel. “It’s the girl who stopped the horse!”

  Guttle saw Avra and her friends beside the ditch a bit further along. She pulled her sister aside. “What’s the clapping about?”

  “It’s for you, silly.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you saved those children.”

  “What children?”

  “The little ones playing in the lane. You ran out and stopped that galloping horse with your head. If you hadn’t, the children might have been killed.”

  “You saw me do that?”

  “I didn’t, but other people did. Izzy told me. The whole lane knows.”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “Don’t get modest now, Guttle, not when I’m finally proud to be your sister.”

  “I don’t believe this!”

  “Neither did I. But you’ve got a patch on your head to prove it.”

  Guttle walked back to Dvorah. “There’s been a mistake. They think I saved some children by stopping the horse.”

  “Maybe you did.”

  “I didn’t see any children.”

  “That doesn’t mean they weren’t there. Did you look down the lane?”

  “Of course not. I heard the hoof beats, I turned toward the horse.”

  “There you are.”

  “But I wasn’t trying to stop the horse. I was trying to avoid being trampled.”

  Meyer Amschel had come up beside them and was listening, smiling, grateful to see her on her feet. “Perhaps it’s as you told me at the Fair,” he said. “What’s good for Guttle is good for the world.”

 
; She didn’t smile. “I have to explain to them.”

  Meyer put a finger on her lips. “The Judengasse has few enough heroes. Why take a new one away? Besides, you may have saved some children, whether you intended to or not. Their mothers, I’m sure, don’t care what was in your mind.”

  “Hold me,” Guttle said.

  He wrapped his arms around her. “By the way,” he said, his lips almost touching her ear. “The answer to your question, which you ran from me too quickly to hear, is no. I didn’t get into bed with her.”

  Who first read the document on the door after Izzy nailed it up is lost to history. Some say it was Sophie Marcus, but that is only legend. One man, then another, then as word spread small groups of other men, pressed close to read the Frankfurt Council’s words excoriating them for seeking equality. They muttered and cursed, and in a rare lapse of equanimity about this continuing insult — this imprisonment — of three centuries, strode up the lane in the direction of the two police officers who had come to assess the horse problem, the two city workers, and the lifeless beast. Some of the men were shouting epithets against the Frankfurt Council. People stepped out of shops and looked out windows to see what was happening. Some added their presence to what was becoming a small protest. As they neared his rag shop, Ephraim Hess heard what they were shouting, heard what was posted at the synagogue. His face grew warm, his blood grew hot. He joined the line of men directly at the front, as was his way, holding a large green apple into which he had just bitten. As the men neared the Constables, the Kapitän, his muscles tensing, let his hand rest on the handle of the pistol in his belt. The junior officer fingered his musket. A man beside Ephraim bent and picked up a handful of mud and rolled it into a ball. Others did the same. Seeing what was happening in front of their shop, Eva ran to Ephraim and demanded that he come back inside. When he refused she tried to take the apple. Gently but firmly he pushed her away.

  Shouts against the Frankfurt Council grew louder. The front line of men was ten metres from the officers and the horse. Ephraim sensed that a climax was approaching. Something had to happen now or all this pent-up fury would drain away, and the men would feel impotent. Not knowing if he was being a hero or a fool, and not caring, he stepped further in front of the others, reared his arm back in a clear indication that he was about to throw the apple. The Kapitän pulled his long-barreled pistol from his waistband, held it level in front of him with an outstretched arm, the barrel pointed directly at the rag dealer. Children who had been watching the horse, as if for signs of life, held their breath. The entire north end of the Judengasse seemed to hold its breath.