by Robert Mayer
“If he’s interested.”
“You can only let him know your feelings. I would think he would know them already, but with men you can never tell. Sometimes they wear blinders, like a horse. Once you open his eyes, it’s up to him. I never asked why you preferred to be alone all these years. And I never asked him. About some things you don’t pry.”
“My work.”
“I know. And his work. But Lev got married.”
“Look what happened.”
Guttle had turned away to look at the river. Rebecca’s eyes followed. With much shouting, sailors were hauling up the anchor on a large two-masted sailing ship that would be setting off towards the Rhine, its cargo to Frankfurt delivered.
The tea water was boiling. The bubbling brought Rebecca back to the moment. Simcha was in the dining room. She removed the kettle from the stove — and heard a knocking at the front door.
“Who could that be?” she said to Simcha as she passed, wiping her hands on a dish rag. She opened the door to find Brendel standing there, looking agitated, her hair disheveled.
“Rebecca, is Georgi in his room?”
“I think so.”
“I need to run up and see him for a moment. It won’t take long.”
“Is something wrong?”
“No. Yes. I can’t talk now. Can I go on up?”
“Of course.”
The Doctor stepped aside as Brendel hurried by. Her feet flew lightly up two flights. Rebecca heard her knock on Georgi’s door, exchange a few sentences with him. When Brendel came down, looking about for Rebecca, she found her in the dining room.
“Oh! I didn’t know you had company. Good evening, Rabbi. I’m sorry to interrupt.”
“It’s not a problem,” Rebecca said. “We’re about to have tea. And some of your mun cake. Would you like to join us?”
“I wish I could. But I have to go now.”
She turned and was out through the door before they could ask her anything else.
“What was that about?” Simcha wondered.
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen Brendel so flustered. Something is wrong.”
“She went up to see Georgi, so it must be about the shop.”
“Perhaps. But why didn’t Yussel come?”
Neither had an answer. Rebecca returned to the kitchen and poured two glasses of tea. She set them on the table. Simcha sliced off a piece of cake, yellow cake marbled with poppy seed mun, and put it on a plate for her, took a slice for himself.
“So,” Rebecca said. Her stomach was thumping as if it had a heart of its own. Now was the time, she thought, if ever she was going to speak.
“Emil . . .”
“Rebecca . . .”
They had spoken at the same time. Both of them smiled.
“You first,” Simcha said.
Rebecca could hardly speak. “No, you first. You’re my guest.”
“Very well. I have an important question I want to ask you.” Simcha sipped at his tea.
Her blood was pounding in her ears, her wrists, her groin. For a moment she closed her eyes. Perhaps Yahweh was being kind, and she would not have to confess her feelings first. She glanced at the framed drawing on the wall behind Simcha’s head, Hiram’s charcoal sketch of she and Brendel whirling about at Guttle’s wedding. Her heart was whirling even faster now. Where, she asked herself, has the calm and competent Doctor gone? My body is acting sixteen.
“I have been thinking about marriage,” Simcha said.
Yes! Her heart wanted to sing out the news like a songbird heralding the dawn; she still remembered such sounds. Yes! She kept her trembling hands beneath the table.
“I know that will sound strange to you. I’m fifty-one years old, I never thought to wed.”
“Not at all,” she managed to say, her voice sounding to herself like a dry rasp, plaster being ripped off a wound.
“But some think I may soon become the Chief Rabbi.”
“Of course you will.”
“Not necessarily. Rabbi Jonah is of the old school, the same as Rabbi Eleazar. I think he will be the choice.”
“Jonah is almost as old as Eleazar.”
“He still has a few years left, I would imagine. The point is, I’ve thought about it, and decided that the Chief Rabbi, whomever he is, ought to have a wife. He would seem more solid, more trustworthy, with a wife behind him. Then I thought more, and decided that whether I am named Chief Rabbi or not, Emil Simcha ought to have a wife. It’s time.”
She didn’t trust herself to speak.
“I was wondering how you feel about that.”
“About you taking a wife? If you want to, I think it would be wonderful!”
“Good.” He bit into the soft cake, chewed, swallowed. “I don’t need your permission, of course, but we’ve become quite close, and I wanted to see how you felt.”
Permission?
“Several times now I have had lunch with the widow Baumgarten. Thelma, her name is. The food was fine. Her house is very clean. She is a bit on the portly side, compared to you, for instance— ”
Compared to me …
“ —but I think she would do nicely as a Rabbi’s wife. Should I become Chief Rabbi, I would need someone to keep that large house clean. And to cook dinner for guests. The Chief Rabbi must entertain, after all. So I am planning to ask Thelma tomorrow if she will marry me. I wanted you to be the first to know.”
Rebecca gripped the table, trying to stop the room from spinning. To gain time, to think straight, she tried to drink some tea, but her hand was trembling on the glass.
“I’m glad you have no problem with that,” Simcha said.
“Why would I have a problem?” She was sure her voice was quivering, but he seemed not to notice.
“Of course, we’ll still be friends, you and I.” He took another bite of cake. “You want to hear something funny?” His mouth was half full of mun. “When I first got the idea to marry … ” He swallowed the chewed cake “ … I thought of you.”
The intake of her breath was sharp, as if someone had grabbed a private part of her. She coughed, to cover the sound.
“Then I had to laugh at myself. Imagine, Doctor Kirsch cleaning house for me, while her patients wait at the hospital. Imagine her scrubbing floors on her knees, instead of cleaning people’s wounds. How selfish could I be?”
Rebecca said nothing.
“You’re being quiet. I was not wrong, was I? You would not want to dust my house and scrub my floors, would you?”
She forced a smile. “I would not.”
“Or wash my shirts and things? Of course you wouldn’t.”
“I have my work at the hospital. I think that’s more important.”
“Exactly. That’s what I told myself. That’s when I decided on Thelma. She and I don’t converse as you and I do, but she’s a good woman. She has children already, they’re grown, so we won’t have to deal with that part. Me with my scar and the pits on my face, it’s just as well.”
Rebecca pictured the bottle of champagne, leaning alongside the block of ice in the ice box. Her fingers felt at least as cold. She was holding her emotions rigid, as if they were not fluid, but brittle bones; as she did before scraping a gangrenous leg, while her assistants fought to hold the patient still. She had last done that … was it only yesterday?
“I’m sure she’ll make a good wife,” Rebecca said.
“I’m happy to hear you say that.” He placed his napkin on the table. “Thank you for a wonderful dinner, as always.” He stood. “But now I must be going. It’s getting late, we wouldn’t want people to talk.”
“We wouldn’t want that,” she said, escorting him to the door.
“Good night, Doctor,” he said, as he stepped into the lane.
“Good night, Rabbi.”
The freshet of night air that swept in from the river felt good, but she did not want to go into the lane. Closing the door behind him, she returned to the dining room, took up the tea glasses and the
cake plates and carried them to the kitchen. She would wash them in the morning. She pictured again the champagne; she could pop it open, a bit of alcohol would be relaxing. But the whole bottle would make her sick, and once she started, she might not stop. Turning down the lamps until the flames died, she climbed the stairs to her bedroom, took off her shoes, her stockings, her dress, her corset. In her pale blue shift she lay on top of her quilt, breathing evenly, looking at the ceiling.
Scrubbing floors. Washing shirts. At least she hadn’t made a fool of herself.
On the floor above her, Georgi Pinsky also lay on top of his quilt, staring at the ceiling, thinking again and again of what Brendel had said to him. “When you open the shop in the morning, Yussel won’t be there. If the police come looking for him, tell them you don’t know where he is. Nothing else. You don’t know where he is.”
That was all. She wouldn’t answer questions. She said she couldn’t, not yet.
“I don’t know where he is.”
What would the police want with Yussel?
“Rabbi, it’s me, the cherub Leo. I have a message.”
“From Yahweh?”
“The angel Yetta informed Yahweh that you were planning to choose Rabbi Jonah. Yahweh had an idea — He’s good at that sometimes. He instructed Yetta to tell me to tell you that since He created man with free will, you are free to choose whomever you desire. You may select Rabbi Jonah over Rabbi Simcha, if that’s what you want.”
“I knew He would be reasonable. We’ve always been on good terms, Yahweh and I.”
“Wait, I’m not finished. Yahweh said I should ask you whether, since He created man in His image, that means that He, Yahweh, also has free will.”
“Of course it does. Who could have more free will than Adonai?”
“Good. Because He said that if you choose Rabbi Jonah as the new Chief Rabbi, He, Yahweh, will strike Jonah dead. On the instant.”
“On the instant?”
“That’s what He said.”
“You mean, with lightning, like in the Bible?”
“Lightning He finds too dramatic nowadays. An affliction of the heart, most likely.”
“He would do that?”
“Joking He wasn’t.”
“That’s some free will I have.”
“The choice remains yours, Yahweh said.”
“Tell Yetta to thank Him for me.”
The Rabbi’s irony was lost on the cherub.
“Once you announce your successor, you’ll be able tell Him yourself.”
“Tell Him myself? I thought only angels . . .”
“Are you listening to me? You will be able to tell him yourself, angel Avram.”
“Angel Avram?”
“Dummkopf!” It was the female voice in the distance.
“Oy, vey. I wasn’t supposed to tell you yet.”
“That’s all right, I won’t tell a soul. I’ll die quicker, before He changes his mind. But I wouldn’t tell anyone.”
“What wouldn’t you tell anyone?” Gilda asked, carrying in a small bowl of porridge, to see if he could keep it down.
“Sit, Gilda, sit. Have I got news!”
“About the new Chief Rabbi?”
“That, too.”
The candle had burned out during the night, and Brendel awoke in a darkness more complete than she had ever known. Not a morsel of light penetrated the stone cellar, not even along the edges of the trap door, which Guttle had covered with a rug. At first she had no remembrance of where she was. Normally happy and eager upon awakening, she sat up slowly, filled with an undefined grief from the past. She tried to wriggle from under it, as she wriggled her long legs from under the sheet that covered her. Reaching out, touching a cold stone wall, she was shocked into the present, the danger to Yussel. Only then did she hear him snoring. The absence of light had banished time, but her body had grown used to waking when it was the hour to go the Café and light the wood stove to bake her daily breads. Yussel’s snores, too, were an indicator of morning; he only snored towards dawn, on those mornings when inner anguish had kept him awake through the night. Patting about in the dark, seeking her undergarments, her hand touched the candleholder. Her fingers found the tin of matches. Wick enough remained on the candle to hold a flame as she dressed, climbed the steps to the trap door, managed to push it open despite the weight of the rug that covered it. Yussel still was snoring as she left the cellar and lowered the door beneath her.
Her body had been true to the time, much like a sleeping animal’s. Dawn had awoken, the lane was lurching to life as she clutched her shawl around her and hurried to the Café. A few steps ahead of her she saw Rebecca, dressed in black, as she walked to the hospital. Brendel strode quickly, tugged at the Doctor’s sleeve. When Rebecca turned, she seemed at first not to recognize her friend, as if her mind was far away, as if she was in a trance.
“Are you all right?” Brendel asked. “You look as if you’re grieving.”
“I’m fine,” Rebecca said, clearing her throat of morning phlegm. “But you — you’ve been crying.”
Brendel shook her head, not wanting to speak of Yussel. She kissed Rebecca’s cheek and hurried on towards the Café, wondering what was wrong with the Doctor. She knew Rebecca would never confess to a problem, would say that nothing was wrong even if she were dying; her feelings were as hidden as Brendel’s were obvious.
She was a little bit late in opening, she realized when she found Hiram Liebmann waiting outside the Café, arms folded, sketch pad leaning against the wall. She unlocked the door, motioned to him to enter, and quickly lit the stove in the kitchen. After putting up water for his chocolate, she went to wash herself. She felt bereaved, as if Yussel already had been taken by the police. When she checked her face in the mirror, near the bed she rarely used, she looked it, with charcoal smudges beneath her eyes, red circles rimming her whites. Like most women in the lane, she did not wear powder. She splashed cold water on her face, hoping that would help.
She was glad her boys had rented a room from Moish Rothschild in the Hinterpfann; she would not want them to see her like this. Daniel, who was nineteen, was working at the Zig-Zig stable as a blacksmith, following his father’s path, though she did not like to think of it that way; the smell of molten iron, the sizzle as it was cooled, must have crept into his veins when he was little. Joshua, seventeen, was in his final year at the yeshiva. Drying her face with a towel, she vowed to cry no more, to look her best when the boys came for supper.
When she stepped back into the Café she found that Hiram had helped her by opening the shutters wide and moving the outdoor tables into place. She carried his chocolate to him as he sat in his favorite spot, with a view down the lane. Trying to calm herself, to rest for a moment, she sat across the small table from him. Hiram frowned at her, pointing to her eyes, his brow furrowing, asking in his silent manner what was wrong. She squeezed his hand upon the table, thanking him for his concern. She shook her head, not wanting to speak of it, not with her voice, not with her hands. After a glance up the lane — the Polizei could come at any time — she returned to the kitchen to mold her breads. Her hands were shaky as she kneaded the dough. She hoped Yussel would sleep in the cellar all day. Perhaps, if the police came while he was there, she could tell them he had fled, that he had gone to Hesse-Kassel, or Hanover, somewhere beyond their jurisdiction; perhaps even to France. If they believed her, perhaps they would not come again.
Perhaps.
Rabbi Emil Simcha had just left the synagogue after conducting morning services when he saw the Chief Rabbi’s wife looking out the second story window of their adjacent house. Gilda Eleazar called to him, told him to get Rabbi Jonah and come upstairs, her husband wanted to speak to them together. Raising a dark eyebrow, Simcha wondered what that could mean. Surely Eleazar was not yet dying. And even if he had made his choice, why call in the two of them?
They found the Chief Rabbi propped up on his pillows, smiling, appearing more cheerful than he had fo
r weeks. Rabbi Jonah, a large man with a full white beard and a full head of white hair, went to the side of the Chief Rabbi’s bed. Simcha, much younger than the other two, stood respectfully at the foot of the bed.
“So much wisdom in one bedroom,” the rebbetzin said, entering to see if they wanted tea. “Maybe not seen since Sarah and Abraham conceived.”
Simcha smiled at this rare public display of the wit with which Gilda Hoerner had won the heart of Avram Eleazar more than fifty years earlier; the rebbetzin had been content to bury her light in her husband’s massive shadow ever since. Rabbi Jonah did not smile at her joke; perhaps, Simcha thought, after thirty years as head of the yeshiva, he no longer registered the voices of women. Or perhaps he found her remark blasphemous.
“No tea, Gilda,” the Chief Rabbi said. “I have here a circumcision to perform.”
Simcha and Jonah glanced at one another, wondering if their mutual friend had lost his senses. Gilda left the room, a smile spreading across her wooden teeth.
“Don’t be frightened, I have no knife,” the Chief Rabbi said. “Besides, you both were circumcised long ago.” He reached to his bedside table, lifted a glass of water, drank from it, set it down. “I only meant that you are both dear to me, as its foreskin is to an infant — but in the matter of choosing my successor, I have no choice but to cut one of you off.”
Simcha and Jonah could hardly relax; what they had suspected this meeting might be about was correct. The chair beside the Rabbi’s bed beckoned; neither dared to sit.
“Instead of telling my successor in private, I have summoned you both so you could hear my reasoning. I decided that would be the best thing to do to ensure your future cooperation in the service of the Judengasse.”
Simcha thought: Joint Chief Rabbis? That would hardly work. What if they disagreed on some important issue?
“Rabbi Jonah, you have been a wonderful director of the yeshiva. For three decades you and your staff have turned out fine scholars. Ever since we attended rabbinical school together in Hanover, you have been my closest friend. If I choose you, I told myself, you will make a fine successor in upholding the sacred traditions.”